Assignment 001: Report

When I was first given this assignment I had many pre-conceptions as to what to produce for my adverts. I wanted something that was stylish and would stand out but wasn’t annoying to view and/or too distracting. In order to think about what I had to design I first thought about what I like to see in a banner. Although slightly annoying and addictive, I enjoy games built within banners, but I generally like adverts with some form of interactivity and that require you to divert your attention away from the page you are currently viewing.

I then started to think about the current task and what I would like to create within my banners. As I had completed an ActionScript based game a few weeks before, I would have liked to include the same concept into one of the banners. As for the other one I wanted to have less user interaction and use audio as the main aspect of the banner. I decided to use the game for the seasonal banner and a sound based banner for the country banner.

As most games within banners on the Internet today are in some way trying to sell or advertise a product, I wanted to incorporate that into the design of the banner. I chose to design a simple, puzzle-based game that faded out to give a quirky message that advertised Nottingham’s ‘Victoria Centre’. Using my knowledge with the game I had made previously it was relatively easy to construct.

For the country banner I chose to design an audio-based advert that incorporated a slider to change the volume of the audio file contained within. This was my initial idea but then I adapted it and added images that would change depending on where the position of the slider on the volume control was. It works rather well, but not how I exactly wanted it to. However, I’m very happy with the way it came out

For both of the banners I researched current trends and styles for banners on popular sites for the target group (teenagers), such as social networking sites; ie. Myspace, Facebook etc, where they would gather quite a lot of attention. I also gained research from website “Banner Blog” (www.bannerblog.com.au) which showcases a large proportion of the adverts/banners that are around on the interent today. I gained quite a lot of ideas from this site and it helped me when constructing my banners.

Within this project I have developed my skills within flash and ActionScript and realised how Web 2.0 is currently affecting the Internet world, both directly and indirectly. I would like to pursue this idea further in the future.

Bibliography

Ellen Finkelstein, EF. Gurdy Leete, GL. Macromedia Flash MX 2004 For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Sham Bhangal, SB. ActionScript For Flash MX 2004 (Foundation), friends of ED, 2003