Proposal

‘The World is a Global Village’

The Concept behind my Website

Marshall McLuhan spoke out about communication in 1964 with his ideas about the world being seen as a ‘Global Village.’ At the time, nobody believed that a world so reliant on print media would become so fixated with electronic media such as the Internet and World Wide Web. I want to take McLuhan’s idea about the ‘Global Village,’ the way in which an event happening in one place of the world can be shown in another part of the world through interaction such as the web. I want to base my website on the idea of the world map, and I want to use that idea to focus on the divide and differences throughout the world that the ‘Global Village’ has created. With my world map, I then want to include the main continents such as Asia, Africa, Australia, America, Europe and Antarctica. As the audience for my website click on a continent it links them and gives information about different countries that are part of Global Village today. My inspiration for the website is Africa as I have travelled there, and seen how less fortunate they are and I want children in the UK to be educated on how lucky they are to be benefiting from the impact of media. Also I want to incorporate images I captured whilst out there to show how countries such as the UK, have an advantage over third-world countries. 

Target Audience

Therefore, the target audience for my project will be children aged 10 to 15 in the UK, as they are at an age where they start to notice the impact that media has on the world. This is the age in which they are introduced to new media, and where having the latest gadgets is most important. To reach my target audience it is important that I use lots of imagery and bright colours to captivate them. I do not want to exclude adults as an audience though as they too can view my website and learn about the Global Village and be able to get an insight into what their children are learning. Also teachers would also be viewing my website and I want their approval of my website from the aspect of it being an excellent educational tool.

Project Timeline

Phase	What needs to be completed?	Completion Date
PRE PRODUCTION 1	Design of the map	March 5th
2	Gathering Images	March 9th
3	Research for content of website	March 11th
PRODUCTION 4	Colour scheme for website planned	March 19th
5	Setting up the Homepage	March 19th
6	Adding further links to Webpage	April 1st
7	Focus on sound	April 8th
POST PRODUCTION 8	Presentation Ready	April 22nd
9	Feedback and Evaluation	May 13th
10	Any final changes to be made to website after Presentation	May 22nd

Product Description

My product is an educational website giving children an understanding to the media around them today, and to put into perspective how it came about. The idea of the ‘Global Village’ will be broken down for them and related to them with links to their everyday life now. The first stage of my production is to create a world map for my home page. I will do this using my own hand drawn map outline. Then I want to finish off the design in Photoshop by including imagery and colour to make it more ‘child friendly’. I want my map to be basic and only include certain countries as I do not want to over complicate my website for my target audience. The inclusion of a map will make it easier for young children to understand Marshall McLuhan’s idea of the world being like ‘a single village’ dominated by the media and will hopefully make them understand how messages can be passed quicker across the world by the influence of the Web. The audience will then be able to click on different continents and it will give them further links and history into whether other countries are in sync with us today or behind us on the media front. As well as links to other countries I want to give a background profile on Marshall McLuhan on my website, a page on different forms of media and history on them and finally a page on the Global Village.

Storyboard

This is a rough sketch of how I want my Homepage to be and the different pages I want on my website. This is the colour scheme I would like on my homepage, bright colours for my world map against a blue background. I want the colours on my website to be earthly colours in relation to the world. I think this is suitable for my target audience and will capture them when they enter my website. One criticism that has emerged is that maybe my titles at the top of the page could lose the attention of my audience. As I am designing my website for a younger audience perhaps it would be better to use alternative titles as the words ‘Marshall McLuhan’ and ‘Global Village’ might discourage them from entering the website

This is a rough example of how I want my pages to be that are linked off from the Homepage. This is a picture of an African family I have taken; they are excluded from the Global Village and are not aware of its existence. I want young children to be shocked by my website and I want to do this with imagery as children tend to not believe until they see evidence. They are naïve due to the influence of media and communication and do not know a world without it.

Bibliography

Marshall McLuhan - The World is a Global Village (CBC TV), 2009 Youtube, online video, last accessed 23^rd February 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDnPP6ntic&feature=player_embedded>.