D1: Justify Content Choice and the Repurposed Formats

In this blog post, I will be justifying the choices I have made while creating my portfolio website. I will also explain why I have repurposed my other media projects for my media profile and how I did this. This is a link to my website: https://faithholly6.wixsite.com/digitalportfolio

On my website, I have included all of my media work. I have not decided to narrow my media career down to a certain field yet so I have used the title "Multi-media Designer" in my navigation bar to convey this to my audience. My website is very colourful and I have used a variety of fonts to showcase my media design skills since my website itself is like a media project. The media work I have showcased on my website demonstrate my use of different Adobe softwares and my understanding of media conventions/design. On each project's web page, I have justified why I have designed the media project a certain way and what programmes/equipment I have used to create the product. You can read each description below:

 

S.Media are a YouTube advertising company; they tasked us to create an advertisement for YouTube based on technology or fashion. My group focused on the Powerbeats Pro earphones. While working in a team, I communicated with my group to make sure we were all free to film. For our advertisement, we decided to show the student having a disastrous day. However, when they equip the earphones, they are happier and more productive. This reaches our student target audience; they would love to complete their studies efficiently with a more positive outlook. I enjoyed experimenting with the music especially; I used a song that says, “I’m here when you need somebody”. The earphones are talking to the audience; no one can be there like they can. When the character places their earphones in, the music changes to a fast-paced song. The character completes their work quickly which I cut to the beat in editing. I created my version of our advert. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the advertisement and I used Adobe Photoshop to create the end graphic. 

Club Europe provide sports and music tours abroad for students and schools. I created an animation to explain how to pack and prepare for a holiday abroad for the organisation. I chose to target teenagers because they are more likely to go abroad without their parents. I had to use the same blue and orange colour scheme that is used on the Club Europe website as asked in the client brief. I decided to make the animation 2D and simple. This ensures that the animation is clear and easy to follow.  

 To create my illustrations, I used Adobe Illustrator. I then animated this using tweening in Adobe Animate. Finally, I used Adobe Premiere Pro to place my voiceovers and add subtitles.  I decided to add these to make sure that everyone can access the animation, no matter their disability. 

I created a detective short film noir with my group. We decided to name our short film Newspaper because they are black-and-white and so is our short film. We focused heavily on the Mise-en-scène and the storyline, our characters are varied and interesting to watch. We wanted to add a modern spin on the genre which is why we have still included technology in our short film. It was a fun challenge trying to include chiaroscuro lighting to fit the conventions and I believe this has made our short film successful.

I assumed the roles of co-director, main camera operative, editor and graphic designer during the process. I ensured that our group was organised and I further developed my leadership skills while working as a team. I used a camera 250D camera, a tripod dolly and a standard tripod to help me film. I created the end graphic using Adobe Photoshop and I edited our short film using Adobe Premiere Pro

 

DonCast films is an arts and culture radio show based around Doncaster. In our talk show, we discuss the many events happening at Doncaster Dome, Cast and Savoy this Winter season. We decided to target families who are interested in going to these events together. 

​To create our radio show, we recorded our audio using the UM-900 Professional USB Condenser microphone. I then used Adobe Audition to edit and create our final radio show. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the logo. To blur the photograph and layer the logo on top, I used Adobe Photoshop. I then imported my sound and the graphic into Premiere Pro. To create the waveform, I used After Effects.

   

I have designed the front cover, contents page and double-page spread of a TV magazine. I based this around the character Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, he is a fan favourite character with an interesting personality. I named the masthead TV Fanatics since this is a TV magazine. The masthead represents a glitching TV screen. I took photos of comic books and edited these together in Adobe Photoshop for the background. In the show, the characters love comic books and superheroes so this relates to TBBT series. Sheldon Cooper loves trains so I included one in my DPS. I  wrote the content for the magazine and based it around Sheldon's quirks, quotes, funny moments and his relationships with the other characters.
 
I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create some of the elements such as the TV fanatics masthead, Flash logo, DPS icons etc. I had to take my own photos and create everything myself for the magazine. I edited some of these photos using Adobe Lightroom. For example, I removed any blemishes from the Sheldon Cooper model which is what they would do in the industry. I used Adobe InDesign to create the magazine itself. InDesign and Lightroom were software I hadn't used before, so I learnt how to use these when creating my magazine. I followed the codes and conventions of magazines by including a drop cap on the contents page, a masthead on the front cover and the character looking at the audience...

I was asked by OMD London to create an advertising campaign based around a healthy fizzy canned drink that I had to design. I created a magazine advert, website banner and TV advertisement for this campaign. Effervescent is a word that means bubbly in terms of a drink and also in terms of personality. The purpose of my drink is to make the target audience feel happy and optimistic about the day ahead. Therefore, I have used bright colours and a fun design to capture the attention of my target audience, everyone aged 16-25. The flavour of this drink is banana, this is the USP of my canned drink because my competitors rarely create banana-flavoured drinks. I used social media as the focus of my campaign; my target audience is known to use social media daily. The Effervescent canned drink is trendy, so I have demonstrated how Effervescent is cool to take photos of. This would create positive publicity and UGC for Effervescent, hopefully creating a trend around the drink and boosting sales.
 
I used Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro to create this multi-media advertising campaign. I learnt how to create a consistent message across the campaign and cater this to a certain target audience.

Repurposing My Work

For this unit, I needed to repurpose my work for my website digital media profile. Here is a list of work I had to repurpose: Sheldon Cooper magazine, Effervescent advertising campaign, Powerbeats Pro advert, DonCast Films radio show, Newspaper short film and my Club Europe animation.

To repurpose my videos, I embedded them into my website to ensure that they are always available and are at their best quality. I have included social media icons/links so you can see my work on YouTube and Instagram. I didn't just include my work as YouTube videos on my website because they will reduce the quality of my work and if something goes wrong or I decide to remove the video then it wouldn't work.

 

 

 

 I created my logo in Adobe Illustrator. To optimise this for web, I exported the logo as an SVG file to reduce the file size.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I them optimised all of my graphics in Adobe Photoshop by using the export, save for web (Legacy) option. This tool allowed me to change the file type of my graphics and the dimensions. I did this to reduce the file size. A smaller file size is ideal for websites so they load fast. I think this was really effective, my website loads fast and the quality of the media still looks brilliant.

 

 

 

To summarise, I believe I have sucessfully achieved my goal of promoting myself using my personal media profile. I have reached my ideal target audience of potential employees by including my best media work, using terminology they could understand (mentioning professional software) and having a contact page where they can talk to me.  My media profile is very interesting as I have purposely used bright colours and different fonts to showcase my design skills so I can intrigue my target audience. They will think that my website is different to other conventional websites. If I had to improve my website, I would include a showcase reel on my home page in place of the reel of work I have to formally introduce me and my work. I would also seperate my work based on the type of content (video vs graphics for example) instead of giving each project a page since I will have too many pages when I start adding more projects.