1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Comparing Websites)

In my previous post I explained what codes and conventions were and how they are broken down into symbolic and technological codes. In this post I will be making the same kind of comparison regarding websites as opposed to music videos. So does our website adhere or subvert to the codes and conventions of other alternative R&B artists?

First and foremost, does our homepage go with or against the 'stereotypes' of other R&B and alternative R&B artists? The layout of our website is quite simplistic. just like the homepage of Adrian Marcel. However, his' is still a bit more detailed. In addition, his homepage  includes the color white, but despite that, both our websites  maintained a similar and quite simplistic color scheme of two or three colours, in my case black and red. Black seems to be a colour that is very persistent when searching for websites of this genre. I found another alternative R&B artist's website that followed the same color scheme in order to support the fact that our website colors go with the conventions of the genre. We can see the similarities in color between Adrian Marcel's website, Miguel's website, and our own despite lacking the color white.

In regards to layout there are quite a few similarities between all the sites, however, also a few differences. First of all, while most websites work in a tab manner, where you have to click the tabs that direct you to a different page of the website,  my website works in a scrolling manner. We essentially put all of our content on one page and all of it can be found while simply scrolling down the page. Similarly like how Adrian Marcel did his, but without the sections on top that you can click to be directed to that part of the page. Personally, despite this technical convention going against of other R&B artists, personally I believe that it was more effective for the star image of Fredo Farenheit because we wanted his to be mainly an organic artist, therefore, by not making such a professional looking website it makes it seem as if he is not so much about his products and looks, and as instead, he is all about his music and his talent, and does not mind having a website that is not fully up to industry standarts. In addition I also personally believe that by having only a scrolling motion to our website it makes it more user friendly as there is only one motion in which the audience has to do in order to browse it. Resulting in a more user friendly website as well. In addition, the fact that my artist is organic and not synthetic goes against some R&B symbolic conventions. As can be seen above, in the homepage of each artist there is a picture of him. Quite a photoshopped 'perfect' looking picture. Whereas our aritst has a more natural look to him, this again re-enforces the fact that he is organic and does not mind about how his looks are shown to the audience.

 My next point which once again re-enforces the fact that my artist is organic is the fact that there is no video or photos section of him on my website, this once again states that he is a musician who is interested in sharing his music to the world as opposed to pictures. We can see that both Adrian Marcel and Miguel are quite synthetic, due to the fact that they are considered musicians yet still have other tabs in their websites like videos/photos/media or instagram press. While in my website there is not a page intirely for pictures, the pictures are shown naturally throughout the one page.

However, Fredo Farenheit is not fully organic as the website I made for him also shows him being synthetic due to the fact that we have a merchandise section. Not only that, but when the digipack front cover is featured there is clear evidence that my artist also has a touch of synthetisis on him. Overall this makes our atist go agains the symbolic conventions of synthetic R&B artists however, a slight part of Fredo still goes with those synthetic conventions. As a result, I personally believe that this creates a nice balance of how my artist is portrayed to the public as well as still making the audience believe he is all about his music, when in reality, a small part of him is still organic.

Clothing-wise, I firmly believe I made Fredo go against the conventions of other R&B artists. Since as I said before, we want the audience to think that he is not that special in his looks because he doesn't care about that. So we can see that is is simply using a plain white shirt underneath a standard coat on top. This makes the audience connect with our artist since they believe he is not any better then them. Due to the fact that he is wearing simple clothes that you would see in everyday life.

After speaking about clothes, this brings me to merchandise, another way in which my aritst goes with R&B artist. R&B artists are known for wanting fame, and wanting people to have this image of them in their heads in which they are the best and the most successful. Where selling clothes with images of the artist on them enforces this factor, I believe that by seeling Fredo's clothes with quite simplistic drawings on them was going against this convention. This is due to the fact that Fredo does not care about attention. Despite selling clothes, he does not sell them to spread his image, or to be full of himself. he sells them simply for extra profit.