MAIN TASK - LESSON 2

30/11/10

So after careful deliberation I've decided on naming my charity... FOUR WALLS
The idea behind the name has a lot to do with the cause, seeing as my charity is in support of homeless people I wanted my charities name to reflect that. When you think of a home you usually draw a picture in your head of a house with four walls and a roof, there's were my inspiration came from.



Also today, while continuing the designing I've created the 'base' of my charity with a navigation bar and a 'quick links' side menu. Here's the logo I've created for my charity with my new found name...

Quite impressive I must say!

MAIN TASK - LESSON 1

29/11/10


Today I started the actual designing of my charity website. Like the prelimenary task, we'll be using the dreamweaver software to design the website, luckily I still have my dreamweaver handbook.


Unlike the prelimenary task, everything in the main task has to be our own work and ORIGINAL. While creating a website for a school we were already given the name, logo, colour scheme, etc...
So the first issues I had to deal with when starting the whole design process, wasn't anything to do with designing. I've had to think of the colour scheme I want to use and the type of logo I want and most importantly, the name of my charity!


Here are a few homeless charity names I've come up with: (try guess the trend)

• Rooftops
• Four Walls
• One Place
• A Place
• Help The Homeless
• Home Sweet Home

THINKING?

SKETCHES & DESIGNS

Here are some of the sketches and designs I've drawn up to form the basis of my charity websites and its pages. You can clearly see that I've only gone in to small detail as I want to use these sketches as templates to help me through the process, my website will likely differ from the sketches. Take a look:

HOME

DONATIONS PAGE

ABOUT US

HOMELESSNESS

RESEARCH & PLANNING

For the past week I've finished looking and researching into my specific cause, homelessness.
Now that I've completed the research, I have begun planning how my website will look with a few rough sketches and designs. I'm currently still in the early stages of my planning and my plans are very likely to change throughout the whole process.

WORKING HARD.

CHARITY RESEARCH

CRISIS:

WHAT'S THE CHARITY ABOUT?

Crisis is a homeless charity, they aim to end homelessness by changing the lives of homeless people and educating by giving advice and information to prevent homelessness. Crisis could be labelled as a typical charity that most people are use to, they raise money through donations and fundraising and use the money to help the less fortunate. However, they also help by advising people and informing people in these difficult situations. The charity does a lot of work and this is obvious through their website.

CHARITY RESEARCH

15/11/10

Today I started more research, this time into my specific charities cause, homelessness.

COMMUNITY VOICEMAIL:

WHAT’S THE CHARITY ABOUT?

Community Voicemail is not a typical homeless charity, they focus on helping people reconnect. There main aim is to give less fortunate people a direct link to gaining opportunities such as jobs and housing information as they may not always be able to get to a phone. Many charities focus more on raising money and helping people in a different way, CVM give people a chance to rebuild their lives themselves.

RESEARCH - MY CHARITY?

11/11/10

Now that my initial research for my main task is completed, I have to decide on what I want my charity to be about.

After looking back on my research and thinking about the resources I have available to me, I've decided to create a website about... HOMELESSNESS.

MAIN TASK RESEARCH

08/11/10

- In today's lesson I looked into more charity websites. I wanted to look at charities related to crime as I wanted a more broad insight into different causes and charities. Here's a website I looked closely at:

CHILD VICTIMS OF CRIME - www.cvoc.org.uk/

MAIN TASK RESEARCH

CANCER RESEARCH UK - www.cancerresearchuk.org/

MAIN TASK RESEARCH

04/11/10

- In todays lesson I finished my research task of annalysing two charity websites and identifying the conventions and what I liked and disliked about them.

SHELTER - www.shelter.org.uk/

- I looked at this charity as it's cause is homelessness. It raises awareness and gives advice to those in need.
Check the screen shots out to look closer at my research.

RESEARCH - CONVENTIONS?

02/11/10

WHAT'S A CONVENTION?
- A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom.  Don't understand?

Conventions are specific aspects which are always found in certain texts.
Examples:

• Horror film - blood, death, victims
• Newspapers - headlines, articles, images
• Story - beginning, middle, end

It's important for me when designing my charity website to be aware of the conventions that a charity website should have, otherwise it could effect the end result of my website.

So what are the conventions of a CHARITY WEBSITE?

• Donations
• About us/mission statement
• Information about the cause
• Why people should get involved
• Victims case studies
• Images of the good work
• Voulenteers comments

Look out for the conventions in my website!

MAIN TASK RESEARCH

Lesson 18 - 01/11/10

-  New term, new task. In todays lesson we began our research of our main task - creating a charity website.

- Similar to my prelimenary task research I'm goin to research various charities and their websites. As I have to create my own charity for a certain cause, I'm going to look at a broad range of charities for different causes.

Specific causues im looking to research include:
-    Drugs
-    Homelessness
-    Crime
-    Alcohol related
-    Medical (STD's, Cancer, etc..)

Not all about the money, helps though.

LESSON 17

21/10/10

So I've finished my prelimenary task, what to do next? Audience feedback.
Asked my whole class to go around and look at my site and comment on what they liked and didnt like. Here's some of the responses I got back:

"Clear and simple layout - it's really easy to read and navigate through"

"LOVE the media page ideas!"

"Good and consistant colour scheme"

"Really nice ideas and features - appeal to the tareget audience"

 "Media page looks great - slightly over-crowded"

"Home page looks a bit plain, needs a bit more colour"

"Needs more information"

Agree with most of the comments, I'll try and incoporate the feedback into my main task.