•In what ways
does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
(Opening slide – say nothing)
Slide 2 – Question 1
Slide 3
My newspaper publication uses many
common aspects of a conventional local newspaper, for example on the front page
of my publication, I used a large main image as this was a common feature I
found in many other examples of local newspapers.
I also used blue bar lines to separate
my page, and to further incorporate my colour scheme of bright blue so that it
was more obvious to my target demographic. I chose blue to be the main colour
to my colour scheme because I thought it fitted in nicely with the fact that my
newspaper was aimed at the residents of Portishead, which is a town located directly
beside the marina. I felt the colour blue connoted ideas of the sea, boats,
seagulls, which are things commonly associated with Portishead itself.
I also included three adverts along the
bottom of my front page, which was a feature I first discovered on the front
page of the newspaper The Mercury. (pictured in the next slide!) I decided to
have three adverts so I could use this as an opportunity to appeal to as many
different interests of my target demographic using just my front page.
Overall I was pleased with the final
result of my newspaper publication, and felt the layout was an effective way of
positioning my articles and images to complement each other.
Slide 4
Here are some examples of similar
newspapers with a similar design layout to my own. Firstly they both have large
main images to attract the reader’s attention which is a feature I carried over
onto my own design. I wanted to use this particular convention because in my
opinion images are one of the most effective ways to attract people to reading
an article or story. They also both have a clear set colour scheme; the
Scunthorpe Telegraph for example clearly uses blue as my own newspaper does,
and The Mercury uses red and this is made clear by the colour of the masthead
being red in this case.
Slide 5
On the second page of my newspaper
publication, I used the typical convention of including multiple stories on the
page – these often aren’t entire articles, I have written “turn to page 27” for
example at the end to encourage my target audience to delve into my newspaper
to read on. This is a convention used by many newspapers; on the first few
pages they will have short introductions to more interesting, lengthy articles,
and then instruct people to turn to a certain page later on to “read on”.
For my article about the See No Evil
art exhibition in Bristol, instead of writing a small caption in the corner of
my photograph accompanying the article, I chose to include a small, blue
caption ‘bubble’ positioned just to the right of my main headlines reading “See
No Evil, See Stunning Art!” which is also a common convention found in
newspapers such as this. I thought it
was an interesting design technique, and it also usefully filled in a small
white space that existed there before, so I was pleased with this creative
decision as it had a positive effect on my second page as a whole.
Also, for my bottom article about a
case of Facebook cyber-bullying, I decided to position the photograph
associated with this story directly in the middle of the article, with the text
appearing either side of the image. I made this creative decision because I
felt it made my page more effectively weighed out in term of the ratio between
images, adverts and text in terms of layout.
Slide 6
For the first article on my front page
of my newspaper, I initially had just two wide columns for my main article but
then I made the creative decision to change it to have three slimmer columns.
This was because it made the text easier to read, and more conventional of the
expected features of a local newspaper front page. I was more pleased with the
overall effect of my page once this small change had been made.
Slide 7
As I mentioned before, I decided to
have three small adverts along the bottom of my front page. Each of these
adverts was designed to appeal to a different type of person within my target
demographic of people of both genders aged 24-50. (From the left)… the one
furthest left is for a Marina Boat Trips service which I thought could appeal
to either gender, or perhaps for families wanting to take a trip out. The
middle advert is for a car repairs company, which I also could thought could
appeal to both genders, but stereotypically more so for men. The third and
final advert to appear along the bottom of my front page in the bottom right
hand corner was advertising a local hair dressing salon, which again
stereotypically speaking would be expected to appeal more to women. By
specifically addressing each of the genders specifically, I felt this would
make my newspaper appear more interesting to my target demographic and
therefore would increase readership figures.
Slide 8
I also found examples of this on other
newspapers, including this edition of The Mercury. However on this front page,
one advert along the bottom is considerably larger than the other two. I
decided to make all my 3 adverts the same size as I preferred the overall
effect of this layout design.
Slide 9
On my front page, I chose to position a
‘Business’ section, as this was a typical convention I found on newspaper front
pages. I used a blue band because this was my chosen colour scheme and I felt
this was a good opportunity to incorporate blue onto my page. At the bottom of
this small section I also wrote “>Page 12” as an indicator of where this
section would be found in the newspaper. After I had added this section onto my
front page, I began to feel more pleased with my newspaper as I believed it made
it begin to appear more professional.
Slide 10
One feature I found important when
capturing my images for my newspaper was ensuring I used bright colour
photography. This is a common feature on most modern newspapers, including The
Sun, The Mercury, The Evening Post etc. It helped my newspaper page to stand
out, and the high quality of these images was important in making it look
genuine. Newspapers have to compete amongst many other leading publications in
order to sell enough copies of their newspapers and reach their readership
targets and appeal to their target demographic.
Slide 11
Here are some examples I found of other
newspapers well known for their use of bright colour photography.
Slide 12
I also thought to include the date in
very small lettering and a traditional Times New Roman font just under my
masthead on the right hand side. This was to make my newspaper appear more
realistic, and it also allows the audience to make sense of what season the
articles they are reading were based in, as stories in newspapers tend to be
recent of the time in which they are published.
Slide 13
For the main article on my front page,
I thought it would be a good opportunity to illustrate my understanding of
articles with an element of tragedy being a very common feature of newspapers.
“Fury at Local Burglary!” was the title for this article and I thought that as
we were aiming to create a local newspaper that this would be a worthy front
page article of a small area, as a burglary would really capture people’s
attention and encourage them to want to read on.
Slide 14
I also used forms and conventions of
real local newspapers in my choice to use large headlines for each of my
articles to make it clear which headline matched up to which story and to make
it clear as possible for my target audience to read these headlines.
Slide 15
On my second page I included many
articles as this is a common convention of local newspapers. I tried to lay
them out in a sort of box-like layout, to make it clear as possible when one
article ended and another began. The use of columns to this effect is often
used in newspapers to break up articles and allow the page to be busy, but not
confusing.
Slide 16
I included a tagline for my local newspaper to abide by normal conventions of many other newspaper publications: “At the head and heart of our community.” I deliberately used the word “our” to suggest that the newspaper is part of the community, and wishes to represent the people within it. Also, by using the word “community”, this connotes the newspaper to be representing a smaller town, rather than a big city such as London or Manchester for example.
I included a tagline for my local newspaper to abide by normal conventions of many other newspaper publications: “At the head and heart of our community.” I deliberately used the word “our” to suggest that the newspaper is part of the community, and wishes to represent the people within it. Also, by using the word “community”, this connotes the newspaper to be representing a smaller town, rather than a big city such as London or Manchester for example.
Slide 17
The title of my newspaper, “Gordano
Express”, was my final choice because I thought it was important to have the
name of the location which it was set in it. I then made various mind maps of
the expected types of names newspapers often had and this was the one I felt
had the best ring to it.
Slide 18
This is my finished newspaper
advertising poster. I was pleased with my use of fonts and photography for my
poster, but if I were to go back and repeat the process then I’d have used a
grey or perhaps a light blue background, so to give a bit more weight to the
overall image and so the hand looks less like it’s floating around in mid air.
Slide 19
This is my finished radio advert for my
newspaper. (The file saved as longer than I intended, but the advert itself
ends at 27 seconds.) I was happy with my advert, and decided to use a horn
sound at the beginning to catch my audience’s attention straight away. I then
had the sound of waves crashing in the background and the sound of seagulls
over that. I decided to opt for this sea-side theme for my radio advert to go
with the fact that Portishead is located next to the marina and I wanted to
address this. For the voice over, I asked my mum to be recorded for me. This
was because she fitted the perfect medium for my target audience age of 24-50.
I thought it was important to have someone with a clear speaking voice, and no
pronounced accent so not to make the radio advert difficult to understand. I
was pleased with the way this sounded overall. I considered placing some sort
of sea-side type music over my radio advert, but after testing a few ideas out
including Hawaiian music and a soft guitar sound, I felt that layering any
music over the top of what I’d already created would simply ruin the effect I’d
already created and make the words not clear enough to understand. I felt being
as simple as possible with the radio advert would would advertise the paper
more effectively.
•How
effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think
the combination of my main product and ancillary texts were very effective,
however if I had given myself more time I would make some changes to the
poster. For example I’d perhaps change the colour of the background of my
poster to blue, to further incorporate my colour scheme and make the poster and
newspaper appear more related.
I think
both my ancillary products combined very well, as on the poster it reads “Grab
your copy today!” and this is also the last line of the script for my radio
advert. I felt it was important to have something linking these two products
together so people would be able to recognise the same newspaper was being
advertised in both cases!
Overall
I was pleased with the effectiveness of my combination of main product and ancillary
texts.
•What have
you learned from your audience feedback?
In a
lot of ways, the audience feedback helped me to realise just how important it
is to ask certain questions to the people you aim to be appealing for, as they
do not always give the answers you would have expected them to give. This is
why by double checking, you get much better chance of appealing to the people
you want to attract to your publication/product.
At the
beginning of my research process, I created some pie charts using the
information I gathered from a select number of people, so I could easily
compare the figures I got and know which methods would be best to use when
making my own newspaper.
From
the second question I asked, I was able to find out that there were as many
people interested in reading a free newspaper than there was reading a bought
national newspaper which was useful to know, as this meant I could still aim to
appeal to a very wide audience.
I also
asked whether they thought colour photographs would work best on a newspaper,
rather than black and white images and a large majority of my audience said yes
that they’d prefer the photographs to be in colour.
I then
asked which newspaper they preferred to read out of The Post, The Times, The
Observer or ‘other’. Most people answered ‘The Times’ so in my research and
ideas for layout and design I looked at some physical copies of this newspaper
to see if I could find inspiration for my own work.
•How did you
use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
In the construction of my
newspaper, I used InDesign as the programme to create my newspaper itself. I
found it very easy to use after some practice, and found the tools and controls
easy to pick up in time. For example, the positioning of text boxes around the
page, and use of layers came in very handy when creating a publication such as
a newspaper, as it needed to be constantly edited and changed along with my
ideas.
For most of my adverts for
my newspaper, I used Photoshop to edit and create them. I was really pleased
with how my adverts turned out, and I am glad I had a chance to practice using
some of these Photoshop skills for later projects I may do in the future.
I used a Sony a230 DSLR
Digital Camera for capturing the photographs for my newspaper. It was important
to me that I used a camera of such high quality, to get a successful range of
images. I was pleased with the way my photographs came out, though if I could
go back and change anything it would be to retake my main image on the front
page of the mirage building and make sure it was taken on a day where there
were blue skies! I could have changed this also on Photoshop, but I struggled
for time slightly towards the end and wanted to use my time on the Macs in
school productively as possible.
Over the length of the
course I have however greatly improved my skills on the different programmes,
technologies and software I plan to use these skills and build upon them in any
later projects I do.
^ Here is one link to my evaluation powerpoint, however this version has no sound as it's on slideshare!
