Final Cover

Final Billboard

Photography research for website

The images above show the home pages of two regional lifestyle magazine, the same genre as the magazine which I am going to create. A lot of the images on these pages include landscape shots showing an area within the region. This suggests that I should use a series of landscape shots on the site for my magazine as it will allow me to give my audience a clear idea of what the area which I am talking about looks like. This will also make it more interesting for the reader.

There are also a series of close up images showing part of the life in these areas. This is something that I may want to do when making my website as it will easily allow me to specifically target a younger audience as I can include objects which they will stereotypically find appealing, thus attracting them to my magazine.

Equipment List For Website

Canon 6D Camera
Canon Lenses
Tripod
SanDisk 32GB SD Card
Apple Mac
Apple MacBook Pro
128GB Data Traveller Memory Stick
Apple Magic Mouse
Adobe CS5 suite

Photography lighting research for the website

The advances in technology has had a huge impact on the way in which we take photos and the quality of the images produced. Before the development of digital technology, photographs used to be taken on rolls of film which would then need to be developed later in order to produce a hard copy of the image. This development has meant that the way in which the photographs can be edited has changed, allowing them to make almost any image perfect for it's purpose. This has led to the development of photo editing software such as Adobe's Photoshop package. This allows people to edit every detail on the photograph allowing me to make the image perfect for its use.

These changes in technology will allow me to take high quality images and then edit them to a very high standard in competition with professional publications and on professionally made websites.

On my website I will use predominantly use a series of outdoor shots and landscapes as these images will best show the theme behind my magazine which is life in Cornwall. The main attraction and beauty of Cornwall is it's vast open spaces and stunning beaches. The best way of capturing these times behind Cornish life is by taking photographs of these areas to be included on the website, which would involve me taking landscape and outdoor images.

This idea seems to be taken on by most professional lifestyle publications as they seem to use a lot of this type of image. However, some of them will often use models in a photoshoot environment on their website. I don't think I will use this sort of image because it would not usually appeal to my target audience because it can come across as boring.

Website Flat Plans

Primary target audience research for the website

Website Survey Analysis

I have designed a survey for people to fill out so that I can find out what appeal to my target audience on a website. I designed my survey to have ten questions relating to websites so that I know how to attract them to my website when I come to designing it. Here are my results:

These results show that over two thirds of the people who complete my survey were male with 68.18% of the responses compared to 31.82% of the responses coming from females. This suggests that when I come to making my website I should include content which will appeal to a masculine audience rather than a feminine one as these people are the most likely to see the site. This should mean that my site will be more successful if I target this audience with the content, colours and style of the website.

These results show that the large proportion of the people who completed my survey were under the age of eighteen as 45.45% of the responses came from this category. A lot of the responses were not from people aged 35 and above. This suggests that I should design my site to appeal to a younger audience rather than an older one because these people will be my primary target audience.  I will appeal to these people by using the stereotyping set by years of media theory, which should attract this audience to my website.

These results are fairly varied but the most popular response came from the lowest category for average household income which was £0- 24.999. This took up the highest amount of responses out of all categories with 31.82% of the response. This suggests that my target audience lies within the middle and lower classes. This will have an impact on the sort of content which I will put on the site as I will need to appeal to this audience. Some content will stereotypically appeal to this audience better than others and I shouldn’t include content which costs a lot of money as it will alienate my target audience from this website as they will start to feel that this website is not meant to be aimed at them.

These results show that the large majority of the people who complete my survey were of a white/Caucasian ethnicity as 40.91% of the people who complete my survey came from this category. This suggests that I should include content and choose to features things such as colour which will stereotypically appeal to this audience. However, the rest of these results are fairly varied which means that if I want to appeal to the largest audience possible I must include a large variety of content and hope that there is something in there that appeals to everyone.

These results show that by far the most common response to my survey came from people with a heterosexual sexuality, as 71.43% of the people who responded lie within this category. This suggests that I should target a heterosexual audience as I will have an in depth knowledge of what appeals to this audience as they are the most common category. By targeting these people my website would stand more chance of being successful, as the results of my survey will show what they find appealing on the website for a regional magazine.

These results are much more spread out than previously analysed results. `However, the category that stood out the most in these results was ‘listening to music’ as 54.55% of the people who responded selected this option. This suggests that it would be a good idea to include a story about music on the website as this is the sort of article which my target audience will find appealing. Other popular categories included ‘watching films’ and ‘playing computer games’. Again it may be a good idea to feature content about these subjects because this will appeal to the large majority of  my target audience meaning there is a higher chance of my website being successful at appealing to my target audience.

These results show that 45.54% of the people asked like a horizontal navigation bar at the top of a webpage. This means that to appeal to the largest amount of my target audience possible I should use this from of navigation. This is because they know how to work this form of navigation and over complicating it may lead to confusion and frustration.

These results show that people like top see large images and a small amount of text on a website as these are the two most popular responses with 54.55% and 36.36% of the votes. As this appeals o my target audience I should use this sort of layout on the website I create for my magazine, as this appeals to the largest audience possible thus not limiting my target audience to specific individuals or groups. 

These results show that red, blue and purple are extremely popular with the people that I survey as these categories appeal to a large proportion of my target audience. The colour red was selected by 59.09% of the people who completed it, blue with 54.55% and purple with 50%. This suggests that in order to appeal to my target audience I should include these colours. However, I will need to use them in a consistent and uniformed colour scheme throughout the whole site to avoid the site becoming to look like it is ‘tacky’ and too childish for the audience which I am aiming to appeal to.

These results show that in order to attract my target audience to my website I should include stories about the local entertainment in the Cornish area as 54.55% of the people who responded to my survey chose this option.

In conclusion with my website I am looking at a similar target audience to the one I was looking at for the billboard after completing target research on that. In order to appeal to this audience my website should feature certain things in order to attract them to it. This includes the colours red, blue and purple. It should also feature stories about music, film, computer games and local entertainment. The site should also use large images and small amounts of text as this is what appeals to my target audience. Finally, the site should use a horizontal navigation bar at the top of the page as this is what my target audience finds appealing.