ICT Coursework 1A MyName
Dartford Grammar School
Mark Sheet
Section A
State the purpose of the work
The catalogue I have had to produce has had a very specific purpose in its creation. The reason I have completed this work was so that I could ensure a successful marketing campaign for my band, TORN. The catalogue I produced was thusly fully produced for the band in order to help with the product sales, and thus has been developed to be given to fans to convey useful information and product details.
This means that the catalogue was designed as a clearer, better, and more improved way of displaying information on the band that any fans may wish to know, as well as by showing any items that may be on sale so that they can be ordered and bought, which ultimately will improve sales and also the money made by the band and thus profits.
The age group has been designed to be all inclusive, so that the catalogue appeals to the widest variety of people possible in order to maximise profits. There has however been a specific concentration to younger fans who may wish to own merchandise as a fashion statement, thus there are many products which will appeal to this age group. The style and design however will come across as sophisticated and smart, and will thus portray professionalism to the older customer.
Ultimately, this catalogue will end up greatly benefiting the band, due to attracting far more sales through an ...
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The age group has been designed to be all inclusive, so that the catalogue appeals to the widest variety of people possible in order to maximise profits. There has however been a specific concentration to younger fans who may wish to own merchandise as a fashion statement, thus there are many products which will appeal to this age group. The style and design however will come across as sophisticated and smart, and will thus portray professionalism to the older customer.
Ultimately, this catalogue will end up greatly benefiting the band, due to attracting far more sales through an easily accessible and developed design system, as well as age specific products. The catalogue even includes helpful information that you may want to learn about the band, and thus may even help in attracting fans.
This is why I have developed my catalogue over three drafts, as well as researching many sources in order to develop the best, most helpful catalogue I could.
Use different types of information from a range of IT & non-IT sources
Altogether, I used two non-IT sources as well as some different IT sources in order to gain vital information about the catalogue. Not only did I research the pricing of products through sales websites, but I also looked at physical catalogues in order to look at design and presentation.
The physical catalogue from the ‘Gadget Shop’ can be seen included in the previous folder along with my three draft catalogues. Also, thanks to the ‘Mick Jagger Centre’ catalogue, I was able to see that many music related catalogues include some form of tour schedule in them. This gave me the idea to include a tour schedule within my catalogue. These two catalogues can be seen included with the task.
As can be seen from my ultimate logo choice, the physical catalogue has influenced me greatly in my design choice. This can be seen most clearly in my choice of logo, seeing as it is purple, as purple seemed to work well for the ‘Gadget shop.’
Websites I have used, such as www.bandbonanza.com, www.bandmerchandise.com, or individual group sites were very helpful in aiding me during the production of my catalogue by way of explaining the different prices I should set band merchandise at. www.amazon.co.uk has helped me even more through pricing, as it has allowed me to check certain products, and see how much they are expected to sell for, however, this website had limited usefulness when it comes to checking products such as shirts, so I can also say that while the internet and IT sources may be useful to an extent, they should not be solely relied upon, because they are not always accurate, let alone easy to find information on.
As well as utilising internet sources, I have also made sure that I have as much information as possible on topics that are vitally important to the safety and security of my catalogue and project. The most obvious of these would be my usage of “Microsoft Encarta.” This is a computerised encyclopaedia program, and it enabled me to search for all the vital information I have needed in order to protect my computer from computer viruses, as well as telling me about what types of viruses there are as well as information on hackers and on how other companies marketing techniques have been successful.
Furthermore, in order to add another IT source to my catalogue, I made use of ‘Clip-Art.’ This provided me with some options of pictures that I could include in my catalogue. Further explanation of this is in the ‘Clip Art Inclusion’ Section
It is for this reason that I amalgamated both IT with non-IT sources when coming up with my ultimate catalogue design, so that I could get the best of both. I chose to use the internet for discovering pricing, and mainly I used non-IT for seeing what companies would be using in order to sell their product and catalogue design wise, thus helping me adopt some of their styles to my purpose, and inevitably making my catalogue more appealing, and also making my product catalogue more successful in actually making sales.
Search for information using multiple criteria
While searching for information, it was very common that the internet search program I used came up with millions of hits for the thing I typed in. In order to obtain a more specific result, I would have to specify my searches. In order to do this, I would have to use either inverted commas, which will make it search for exactly what I type, or else use some BOOLEAN search techniques.
These would include the three options, AND, OR, or NOT. For example, if I typed in ‘Band Merchandise,’ the computer would search for ‘band,’ then ‘merchandise,’ then ‘band merchandise’ within a document. This may apply to thousands of websites, as it counts any one that contains band, merchandise etc.
With Boolean, I can specify this. If I typed instead ‘Band AND Merchandise,’ then instead of searching for all the words separately like normal, then looking for them both, it would only look for websites with ‘Band Merchandise’ written together.
If I were to specify by typing ‘Band OR Merchandise,’ then the computer would do the opposite, and search for any website containing ‘band,’ and then any website containing ‘merchandise,’ separately, not together.
Finally, if I only wanted the merchandise, and not information about songs as is included on many sites, I could type ‘Band Merchandise NOT Songs,’ thus searching for any website with band merchandise, yet eliminating any website from the search that has song in it, making it much more sensible, as many sites that talk about and concentrate on songs will be eliminated.
Also, in order to even further specify what I want to search for, I could make use of inverted commas. For example, if I wanted to search for “Band Merchandise Sales” and had it in inverted commas, it would search for each word in that specific order with the exact spelling, thus purely refining the search to exactly what I want.
All of these ways will greatly specify all of my hit levels and amounts, making it even easier for me to find any of the information I desire at a much more useful level.
Use hyperlinks or refined searches
In order to obtain images for use in my catalogue, I have had to utilise internet hyperlinks in order to get pictures that I can use correctly. The three screenshots that can be found below show how I have used internet hyperlinks in order to obtain images.
