When creating our poster and radio advert for our newspaper, we tried thinking about how we had presented our newspaper and the preferred reading style we had in mind. We wanted something that was simple, yet memorable and eye-catching. Our main product – the newspaper – was mostly influenced by two papers, our local paper – MK citizen, and the national tabloid – The Daily Mail. When looking at these papers, we are able to see that they use attention-grabbing images and bold headlines, using bright deep colours (usually red or blue) for the adverts or banners. In trying to convey our inspiration we kept the basic guideline for a newspaper, using bold black text for our headline and bold small text for the introductory paragraph into our main story. We created our own logo, which also featured on our posters, and then used colour adverts with a light blue theme running through them, which also enhanced the small blue banner underneath our newspaper header.
So, as to combine our ancillary texts to our newspaper, we started on our posters. We tried to show what we hoped people would like about our newspaper, for example: it’s free, it contains the latest local news, people of all ages can read it, etc. So we decided to make a range of adverts, each showing half the face of random people who are looking up at a line or appear to be saying something or listening to something. We used cheesy captions in some and others contained information about our newspaper. We used simple layout, using plain white background and then black bold text (similar to headline format) for the captions.
To link our products together, we combined our poster ideas with our radio advert. To do so, we used a similar idea for the radio advert. Our radio advert started off with four people giving different reasons as to why they read our newspaper. Here, we hoped that this linked with our posters as it shows that different people like to read our paper, seen in the four people used for the posters. Furthermore, we linked the two, as one of the four people even used one of the captions from the poster advert.
We believe that all together, these create an effective overall product. Our main product is recognisable and simply done, much like our posters and advert. Each production is linked together and allows our target audience to be reminded of each of them every time they may hear our radio advertisement or see our poster or newspaper.
MK Bulletin uses original forms and conventions of real media products as it uses typical features of national and local newspapers, such as headlines, sub-headlines, images linked to the article and adverts. To get a rough idea as to how we were going to display and layout our newspaper we did lots of research, looking at and deconstructing both local and national papers such as The Times, The Daily Mail, Herald and Post and MK Citizen (all of which can be found on our blog). Similarly, we did the same for newspaper posters (The Metro) to be inspired and influenced for our own designs; the traditional forms and conventions of which are memorable captions or images and to promote a product. This is very similar to radio adverts in that respect, the only difference being that they tend to have some form of sound effect that is appealing or adds humour.
Looking at all of this, our newspaper challenges the traditional forms and conventions of a real newspaper as although we have kept many conventions of a local newspaper, we have added our own personal touch to the newspaper. For example, we have added adverts that appeal to a younger audience, instead of typical readers in the 25-50+ age bracket. We have kept the articles that our target audience like to read about (the main story about a elderly woman unprovokingly attacked) but at the same time we have used a more informal way of writing, so that our target audience can relate more to our paper. The display adverts we used in our paper were real life images, to give it a more realistic quality compared to more cartoon-like pictures, but still keep a professional appearance.
In the making of our newspaper the audience’s feedback was an important aspect to the newspaper as we had to work out what the audience would like and what would appeal to the audience.
To start with we looked at different newspapers such as The Times and The Daily Mail. This helped us with what people like to read and what stories are placed on the front cover. This helped our group collect and analyze what features are used and what draws the readers attention and what makes the reader buy a newspaper on a daily or weekly basis.
After looking at the different newspapers we started to make a questionnaire to find out what people would like to read, what draws attention i.e. what stories are more likely to shock and entice the reader to buy the newspaper. We did this questionnaire as part of market research. From the results of the questionnaire we can see that there was a small difference between the sexes, for example from the results trends can be seen that more males tend to buy broadsheets such as the Independent, the Guardian and the Times, where as females are reading more tabloid papers like the Daily Mail and local newspapers. Even though that when looking at the different categories of papers that people bought it showed that both male and female tended to buy more than one newspaper. However there was a slight difference between what age groups looked out for in a newspaper, younger people liked to read current affairs and celebrity gossip where as the older generation liked to read about politics, food and travel. When asked about whether they visited newspaper websites, very few answered yes- once again it was the older participants that did.
This questionnaire showed us how to aim our newspaper at different ages but when looking at the work we produced for example the newspaper posters they have been aimed at more of a younger generation as we have used young people to be used in the adverts, but we have still have used lines like “want something free to read while drinking your morning tea” this appeals to an older generation as they are more likely to sit down and read the paper whilst having a cup of tea. Also on the front cover we have used stories that will still appeal to older generations by having our main headline.
With all of our work we have done for our newspaper has used different technologies in the construction and research to create a successful piece. The first thing we did that consisted of using a type of media technology was to create a blog where we can document every stage that we take. This helped us organize the way we were going to do the work and the different working stages.
After starting the blog we then moved on to researching a wide variety of newspapers and analyzing and deconstructing the front covers, to present this work we did the deconstructions on power point slides as it was easy to add text boxes and arrows. This helped as all our research was done on power point slides so it easy to keep track of and save.
To get a lot of the image that we used in the research we had to use the program paint to get the screen shots of website and newspapers and converted them into images we could transfer into PowerPoint.
When developing the logo for the newspaper we did first try to design and create the logo on paint but when we had finished our final logo for MK bulletin the image was pixelated and wasn’t a higher enough quality for it to be used on a newspaper so we decided to re-create the logo on Photoshop and a new font as we felt that the old font didn’t fit the old style we were trying to apply to the newspaper that’s why we changed the font to a more traditional timeless font.
When making the front page and second page of the newspaper we used publisher as we thought is would be easier to organize and design on than Photoshop one of the main reasons was that the newspaper its self on Publisher was because it was more text based and would be easier to manipulate font and where it would be placed instead of using Photoshop.
But we still did use Photoshop again when we designed the newspaper adverts which are featured on the front page and second page all of them were designed and created on publisher except for the Christmas shopping at MK advert which was done on Photoshop as we thought we should use a variety of different media technologies.
After making the front cover of our newspaper we then used a recording system to record our radio advert onto. We decided to do radio advert as we thought it would be the best things to do as we could apply ourselves and make a successful advert.
The media technology we used the most has to be word or power point this is because we were forever typing up things and checking them over before they were posted on the blog or used in the newspaper.
To start with we looked at different newspapers such as The Times and The Daily Mail. This helped us with what people like to read and what stories are placed on the front cover. This helped our group collect and analyze what features are used and what draws the readers attention and what makes the reader buy a newspaper on a daily or weekly basis.
After looking at the different newspapers we started to make a questionnaire to find out what people would like to read, what draws attention i.e. what stories are more likely to shock and entice the reader to buy the newspaper. We did this questionnaire as part of market research. From the results of the questionnaire we can see that there was a small difference between the sexes, for example from the results trends can be seen that more males tend to buy broadsheets such as the Independent, the Guardian and the Times, where as females are reading more tabloid papers like the Daily Mail and local newspapers. Even though that when looking at the different categories of papers that people bought it showed that both male and female tended to buy more than one newspaper. However there was a slight difference between what age groups looked out for in a newspaper, younger people liked to read current affairs and celebrity gossip where as the older generation liked to read about politics, food and travel. When asked about whether they visited newspaper websites, very few answered yes- once again it was the older participants that did.
This questionnaire showed us how to aim our newspaper at different ages but when looking at the work we produced for example the newspaper posters they have been aimed at more of a younger generation as we have used young people to be used in the adverts, but we have still have used lines like “want something free to read while drinking your morning tea” this appeals to an older generation as they are more likely to sit down and read the paper whilst having a cup of tea. Also on the front cover we have used stories that will still appeal to older generations by having our main headline.
With all of our work we have done for our newspaper has used different technologies in the construction and research to create a successful piece. The first thing we did that consisted of using a type of media technology was to create a blog where we can document every stage that we take. This helped us organize the way we were going to do the work and the different working stages.
After starting the blog we then moved on to researching a wide variety of newspapers and analyzing and deconstructing the front covers, to present this work we did the deconstructions on power point slides as it was easy to add text boxes and arrows. This helped as all our research was done on power point slides so it easy to keep track of and save.
To get a lot of the image that we used in the research we had to use the program paint to get the screen shots of website and newspapers and converted them into images we could transfer into PowerPoint.
When developing the logo for the newspaper we did first try to design and create the logo on paint but when we had finished our final logo for MK bulletin the image was pixelated and wasn’t a higher enough quality for it to be used on a newspaper so we decided to re-create the logo on Photoshop and a new font as we felt that the old font didn’t fit the old style we were trying to apply to the newspaper that’s why we changed the font to a more traditional timeless font.
When making the front page and second page of the newspaper we used publisher as we thought is would be easier to organize and design on than Photoshop one of the main reasons was that the newspaper its self on Publisher was because it was more text based and would be easier to manipulate font and where it would be placed instead of using Photoshop.
But we still did use Photoshop again when we designed the newspaper adverts which are featured on the front page and second page all of them were designed and created on publisher except for the Christmas shopping at MK advert which was done on Photoshop as we thought we should use a variety of different media technologies.
After making the front cover of our newspaper we then used a recording system to record our radio advert onto. We decided to do radio advert as we thought it would be the best things to do as we could apply ourselves and make a successful advert.
The media technology we used the most has to be word or power point this is because we were forever typing up things and checking them over before they were posted on the blog or used in the newspaper.
Sarah Belmont-Colwell and Jess Staples Hull
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