The website for the fictional artist Connor James effectively uses conventions from real artists' websites to engage its target audience. It mirrors websites like Olly Murs and George Ezra through its clear layout, large fun fonts, simple color palette, and positioning of the artist as the focus. Key conventions copied include featuring a new music video prominently, using inflated fun fonts, and including a show reel on the homepage to present the artist as friendly. Bookmarks are also included to aid navigation around the site and keep the audience engaged.

1. In what ways does my website, use,
develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products
Evaluation task 1.
Evaluation of Connor James’s website

2. Layout
• The website is one of the first tools that any audience member will use when they follow their favourite
artists online. For this reason it is important that the website is clear, easily to navigate and engaging. A
website is an easy way to connect with an artist so it is important that it is well advertised to attract the
audience, inform them and most importantly involve them so that they feel closer to the artist.
• When building Connor James’s website it was important that it accurately reflected the his genre, style and
target audience that we have built around him. We looked at similar artist's websites, notably Olly Murs
and George Ezra. Both these solo male artists perfectly fits this description. Like theirs our website is
easily accessible and clearly labeled making it smooth and easy for our audience to find what they want.
Research showed us that we should include items such as a social media page which included the artists
personal pages.
• Secondly, there were other conventions that we tried to match from real life artists. When you first enter
Olly Murs’s website you are immediately greeted by his most recent music video. In our case this is the
‘All-star’ video. On my website the first thing you see is a message informing the audience that the new
single is now available to download This cleverly keeps the audience constantly up to date and involved
making the artist seem more interested in her audience by trying to involve them in the action. We matched
this convention as we wanted to give Connor’s audience the same experience by providing them with his
music video ‘All-Star'.

3. Font (s)
• Like the layout, the font can portray an artists genre, style and target audience.
The font can inform the audience of whether or not the artist is synthetic or
organic and it helps show the attitude of the artist. Similar stars to Connor such as
Robbie Williams, George Ezra and of course Olly Murs, use large, ‘flowy’ almost
cartoon-ish fonts. This shows a relaxed, laid back atmosphere and attitude which
shows both in their music and personalities. Artists like Robbie and Olly use their
cheeky personalities as their trade mark and it defines who they are. We decided
to match this convention on Connors website by putting all the text in the most
inflated and fun font we could find on each page throughout our website. By
matching this convention by doing the same thing, we were able to make our
website clear and easy to explore.
• The primary font that was used on the website was called ‘Chelsea market’ as
shown on the right. This font succeeded in creating the laid back feel to the
website that we were going for.

4. Colours
• Furthermore, the colours also play a important part in dictating the star image, the
target audience of the artist and the genre of music they create. Similar artists to
Connor, like Ed Sheeran generally make use of a simple pallet of black and white
colours throughout and in Ed’s case a hint of green. The effect this has is to show
that Connors image is simple, modern, yet, fun, edgy and urban. We Subverted
this convention by adding a splash of colour in. The main colour we used was
red. This was done because we thought that the younger audience that Connor
would attract would prefer some colour to keep them engaged. Red in particular
was used as it symbolic of fun and animation. The background of the website is a
dark brown. I purposefully chose this colour in order to make the red stand out
even more. However, we were careful not to use any clashing colours that did not
match. For Connors website, we matched this convention of simplicity in order to
make his website clear and elegant to help appeal to not only the target audience
but also a wider audience.

5. Positioning of the artist
• The positioning of an artist on their website is a key feature. Firstly it shows the
audience exactly who the artist is i.e. solo or group, provides an insight into the
genre, and can even give emphasis to the synthetic or organic nature of the artist.
• An important demographic of our target audience is young females between the
age of 12-19. When they visit the website they are mainly interested in looking at
Connor as there is a sense of attractiveness. For this reason we chose to make
Connor the focus point of the website. It was important to make the website
visually stimulating so the audience would remain engaged.
• On the homepage, the first page that the audience views we placed a show reel of
Connor in a variety of locations both by himself, with his girlfriend and with his
friends. The effect that this created is that Connor is a well rounded person who is
friendly and gets along with everyone.

6. Bookmarks
• A website bookmark is a link that makes it easy to get
back to your favourite places. It allows the audience to be
clearly navigate around the site whilst remaining
engaged. Our bookmarks include the homepage, social
media page, tour date page and the merchandise page