Website institution

In order to make my website live on the internet for everyone to view, I will need to use a server to host my website. I decided that I would do some research into servers that would launch my website. The first website server I came across was Fast Hosts. The initial price is £4.99 a month but then there is a monthly increase in price until it reaches £19.99; I kept this server in mind, but ideally was looking for something slightly cheaper. As I continued my research, I found Heart Server. The price was £10.83 a month. Although I was happy with this price, I continued to research to see if there was anything cheape3r out there, as in order of income and success of my magazine, if I could find a server of an equal quality for cheaper then that is what I would do. I continued to search the internet comparing monthly costs of internet serves and their quality and came across Data flame. This was the cheapest out of all the servers I could find, when considering paying for domain name and host site, this monthly price was £5.95.

Website Analysis

The screen shot above is a picture of ‘FourFourTwo’ magazines website. I used this to look at the common conventions of sports magazine websites in order to gain some knowledge of how to create a popular product. 

The layout of the website is very simplistic and is easy to navigate around. At the top of the page there is a tool bar where you are able to navigate between the different pages with sufficient ease and on this tool bar there is a search tab where you can find what you want. This will attract football fans because they are stereotypically people that do not want a difficult read and would want something simple. This is the header of the magazine and I will look to recreate something similar when I come to making my product because as Bentley said in 1997, “media products are best create when rearranging the old to create the new.” This will mean that my product is able to target my audience, as I know they will like it. The colour of the header is predominantly red and white. This connotes the target audience because these colours are common kit colours within football and they have connotations that are directly linked with passion and commitment which are linked with football. As well as this it is the same colour scheme that is used on the FourFourTwo magazine.

The main body of the website consists of mostly images with the title of the story on, this means there is a greater image to text ratio which is something that is a common convention within football products. There are images that are of action from within the football world, interviews, match action and celebrations. Beneath the main stories that have images with them there is a latest news section that has other stories and is just a text title for the story, which is a link. Throughout the main body of the website the same colour pallet is continued. There is also small yellow title above the images which are eye catching and will complete that purpose for the target audience as people aged 15-26 will be attracted to bright to colours.  There is also a consistent organisation and simplicity, which will appeal to the target audience as they are usually young and don’t want anything to difficult to deal with. In regards to typography and lexis, the typography is a fairly basic font with the titles being more exciting to draw readers in. The lexis used isn't too complex and has a very specific semantic field of football. 

The footer of the page is fairly dull and there isn’t much there. It consists of having links to the legal and formal information surrounding the site including how to advertise, privacy policy and cookie policy. This is a common convention of these types of websites because they do not want to see this amongst the main information on the page. There is also another tab where you can subscribe to the magazine. The colour of the footer is grey. This connotes responsibility so having this colour on the footer makes the tone of what is in the footer seem more important and formal, which it is.

The second website that I analysed was ‘World Soccer’. I researched into the common conventions of websites and saw how this website applied them and if there was anything new I had not seen before. I will then use the information I gathered to create my own product.

A common convention of football magazines is to have a very simplistic layout due to the nature of the fans and this website follows this. At the top is a navigation bar where you can change between pages on the website with relative ease. Above this bar there is a banner, which contains an image of one of the products and the masthead. This will attract the target audience because they will not be looking for something that is difficult to work. This is often seen on websites of this genre. The colours in the header are red, white and black. This is a popular colour scheme to use, as they are colours that are commonly seen within football, having a colour pallet of three main colours in the header is also a key common convention that I will look to follow. I will be looking to do this because as theorist Bentley said is 1997, “media products are best created when rearranging the old to create the new.” This will mean that if I use already known conventions then I will already have a way in with my target audience and my product will be able to become a success more easily. 

       

The main body of the website contains the main story with a large image and smaller images with the titles of other football stories, beneath that. This is a very simplistic layout that you often see on these types of websites because the readers are stereotypically people that aren’t looking for something complicated and difficult. This and the high image to text ration is something that is very common to see on the main body of a football website and is something that I will be looking to do when I come to making my own website for my media product.  A similar colour pallet of black and white is continued through the whole website. This is a simple colour scheme that will attract the target audience because they are colours that they are used to seeing within football and it continues the colour scheme that is on the printed product that world soccer also produces.  This will appeal to the target audience as it shows consistency throughout their products.

The footer of the page is fairly dull and there isn’t much there. It consists of having links to the legal and formal information surrounding the site including how to advertise, privacy policy and cookie policy. This is a common convention of these types of websites because they do not want to see this amongst the main information on the page. There is also another tab where you can subscribe to the magazine. The colour of the footer is black. This connotes responsibility so having this colour on the footer makes the tone of what is in the footer seem more important and formal, which it is. There is also another search bar, which pulls the reader back into the website so they spend longer on it.

Research into Editing

I already had some basic editing skills from AS, but decided that I would research some Photoshop tutorials to help me get a broader understanding of how to edit my images to get a more professional and sporty look.

Photoshop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTc4Yysz8OU 

I found this tutorial that taught me how to create the perfect dynamic sport images in Photoshop. This was useful for my work as I would be taking action shots for my products and if I were able to make them look professional it would enhance the quality of my product and enable my products to become successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyI6iuwG8_s

I also found this tutorial that would be useful for creating a professional product because as most of my pictures were taken outside I would not be able to control light, so if the light was a bit dim having watched this tutorial I would now be able to make my images brighter and remove shadows.

Illustrator

To learn skills on how to use illustrator we had a lecturer from Falmouth College come in and do a tutorial day on the basics and some more advanced skills on the illustrator programme. The first thing she taught us was that illustrator works with vectors. This prevents pixilation when zooming in on images. We were also taught all of the tools on illustrator, some of them in more detail then others, also we learnt the shortcuts for tools and navigating around illustrator as this allows you to continue working and prevents you from stopping your work and losing your flow.  One tool we looked closely into was the pen tool; the first thing we learnt was that when using the pen tool it uses anchor points. You can bend the lines by stretching the handles on the lines you have drawn. Learning how to use illustrator will enable me to be able to create a more professional looking product than if I were just to use photoshop.

Researching photographers

Mark Pain

While researching sports photographers I came across Mike Pain. He is a multi-award winning sports photographer and has been for over 25 years. He covers major events all around the world. Ranging from the Olympic Games to the Ryder Cup. He has also covered rugby World Cups and World Championship athletics. As well as having covered these major events; Pain also photographs for the Mail on Sunday, capturing images of the premier league on a weekly basis. He also does work making portraits and features of the biggest stars in the world of sport. However, he foes not just cover sports photography. Other aspects of his work range from food to property photography. He works for both editorial and corporate clients and is the Chief Sports Photographer of The Mail on Sunday. Mark Pain has been named the Sports Photographer of the Year two times, in both 2005 and 2011 at the British Press Awards.   He was named as the British Airways Olympic Photographer of the Year 2012 at the prestigious UK Guild of Picture Editors Award. In 2011 Mark successfully launched the first dedicated Sports Photography School in the UK, and in 2013 became a Nikon Ambassador.

Bob Martin

Bob Martin is a very highly regarded sports photographer that has won many awards. He specialises in shooting action, graphic and editorial pictures for advertising corporate and editorial clients. Bob’s career has been a very affluent one over the last 30 years and he has photographed every major sporting event from the last 13 summer and winter Olympic games to elephant polo and horse racing on ice. His work has been taken from all around the world and published in lots of the world’s most prestigious publications including: Life Magazine, The New York Times , The Sunday Times and L”Equipe.  Bob Martin lives in his native England and boasts to be the other Sports Illustrated photographer to be based outside of the USA. He also worked for London 2012 consulting on photographic issues for the Olympics. He was also appointed the Photo Chief based in the MPC.

Tim Clayton

Tim trained at Yorkshire Post Newspapers in Leeds, UK, his home town for a decade before moving to Australia in 1990 to take up a position as Sports Photographer for The Sydney Morning Herald, which he held for 18 years. Tim left the paper in 2008 to freelance and has traveled extensively for the past four years. He recently relocated to the New York area. His work is represented by Corbis. His many sports assignments have included eight Olympic Games, five Rugby World Cups and the FIFA World Cup. He has been recognized for the high standard of his work winning eight World Press Photo Awards which include three first place awards in 1994, 2004 and 2007. In 2003, The Observer Sports Magazine, UK, placed four of Tim's pictures in its selection of the 50 best sports images of all time. Tim is a keen campaigner on ethics in photojournalism and is a keen advocate of developing photo essays in sports photography to help put the profession on a par with other areas of photojournalism.