EVALUATION

Evaluation
For our A2 media project the assignment was to create one main product which was 2 pages of a newspaper, and two ancillary products, including a poster for the newspaper and two hyperlinked pages for the papers website.
In order to begin my work I had to come up with a target audience I would be basing my project for. I decided after doing some research that there is a gap in the market for a teen/young adult newspaper. I decided to focus on people aged 16-25, the chosen target audience is relevant to the topic because the intension is to distribute the newspaper and advertise the website in and around Southend College/University. I then needed to come up with a title that would represent it. I decided I wanted something that my target audience would like and that would draw attention to it, for example more bold and young rather than conventional. The title I ended up deciding on was ‘Southends Hot Gossip’. I decided on this because it is out of the norm and is something someone of that age group would appreciate. It’s short, bold, out there and daring. Here is the completed look for the title and I think the colours represent the title well and in the same way.


The ways in which my media project uses the forms and conventions of real media products is that in order to make them look specialized I needed to base my work on real media products for them to look professional and realistic. Firstly I started with my newspaper. The brief states to create 2 pages for it, but due to the newspaper being such a big part of the project I decided to design a third page to include all the things I couldn’t fit on the first two. It seemed too little to just do two pages and I thought three would be more appropriate and tie it together better. The way I began to use other media products to develop my own was to look through firstly tabloid newspapers such as ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Daily Express’ and ‘The Star’ , then I moved on to broadsheets like ‘The Times’ and ‘The Guardian’. After looking at these popular and large scale newspapers, I condensed the study down to local newspapers only as this is what my newspaper will be. I looked at ‘The Evening Echo’ ‘The Yellow Advertiser’ and ‘The Metro’. All the layout and content varied in different ways with the newspapers, however I felt my newspaper challenged these because although mine is officially a local newspaper, it challenges the forms and conventions as it sticks to a very tabloid style, such as the bold colours, print and layout however it incorporates local news with tabloid also. The reason for doing this was mainly because I wanted the readers to have a variation of content to read about and not feel like they should need to pick up copies of different media in order to get the mix they would want out of it. With my newspaper they are able to read about local news as well as the main stories tabloid articles would cover. In order to create my newspaper pages I used a programme called Adobe Indesign. The software was quite easy to get the hang of but it took a few weeks to be able to use it without demonstrations however.


Here is the finished product of my newspaper:





With my website which I done secondly, I again looked at the same newspapers above websites to look at their layout and the way their website was designed. I decided again that between local newspapers websites and tabloid/broadsheets, the tabloid and broadsheets looked by far the best in terms of professionalism and content/layout. As you can see below I have compared local newspaper ‘The Echo’ with tabloid newspaper ‘The Sun’ and in my opinion the one that looks better is obvious. Out of the two I decided that as a young student I would much rather log on to something that looked like the tabloid version compared with the local as it just looks so much more interesting and bold compared to the plain layout of ‘The Echoes’ layout.


In order to create my website I used a programme called Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. The programme was very well suited to our task we had to carry out and it was simple to create our pages. A lot of the work was done through Photoshop also as there were things that were quite restrictive creatively on Dreamweaver. Overall I really liked the programme however and would use it again for something like this.



Thirdly the last piece of the project to complete was a poster for the new newspaper. As you can see above I used Adobe Photoshop again to create my poster. I found Photoshop very difficult to use at first, the programme is hard to get the hang of and with only one teacher to a whole class it’s hard to get your turn to be taught what you need to do. After a few weeks of using the programme however it gets easier and easier and by this point I can probably do anything on there to an extent. I decided to stay with the bright eye-catching colour scheme all the way through the products; firstly because I wanted to stick within a common theme and layout therefore people would recognise the ‘Hot Gossip’ colours but secondly because I wanted it to convey what teenagers and young adults would relate to. If I had chosen dull colours students wouldn’t have responded as well in my opinion. Some of this is backed up by my audience feedback which I will discuss later.
I couldn’t do much research on posters for newspapers as they were quite hard to come across. I could only get secondary research from the internet instead of finding it primarily. In a way my poster challenges the forms and conventions because it is unlike one I have seen before but that is the point. I want it to be different and outstanding so it will draw attention to it more.
Here is the finished product of my poster, as you can see it is very eye catching and bold like the rest of my work and I am very pleased with how it turned out.
I believe the combination of my main product and ancillary texts are very effective because in order for the products to work well together you need to combine a common theme throughout the media for example by looking at the evening echo it is apparent that the same colours for the newspaper are used on the website, as well as a common style throughout. I believe this is important for the public to identify your media with and if there is a theme it is easy for the audience to know that the work is clearly of the same genre and mode. For example throughout my work I stuck to the colour scheme of pink yellow black and white. I chose these colours after experimenting with others to see what suited the style of my work the best. In the end I chose these because they worked well together to create the fresh bold look I was going for. An audience will now relate my work as a whole for hot gossip when they see these particular colours; this is how a media product gains recognition and an identity of its own. This becomes very important when it comes to main factors such as marketing and distribution.


For my audience feedback I asked 50 people within the target audience to answer a series of questions about my newspaper. Here are the results:


1. Would you frequently pick up copies of Hot Gossip if they are easy to access?

2. Do you like the way the local newspaper carries the tabloid style?

3.Would you rather see more local news or world news?

4. Do you like the colour scheme of the media product?

5.What do you think a young person like yourself believes are the most important parts of the newspaper for you to identify it with ? Layout-15 headline-20 Colour Scheme-9 Content- 6

As you can see I got a good insight to what the people I am creating the media product for want and this really helped with editing aspects of my product to meet the requirements of the public. It was really interesting to get the public’s view and find out what I could do to connect them with the product better. I found it quite surprising that they believe the headline is most important to the newspaper followed by the layout. But again this makes sense as the headline is a vital part of the products identity and the layout is something readers will become familiar with.
I used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages by focusing it around Adobe Indesign and Photoshop as well as Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 to document all I was doing. I felt our class was very underprivileged when it came to the availability of the technology within our college .Both other media classes were able to work on Apple Mac computers while our class had to stick to PC’s. Because the software we were using to design our products were better suited for the Macs , when it came to uploading work to them sometimes it would have to be resized due to the difference in computers. Also on the Macs you are able to have a clear view of what you were doing and the software was quicker and more modern versions were on them compared to the computers our class were given. They were very slow and the work became more time consuming because of this.I feel we were given a big disadvantage and if we were to do this project again I would require Mac’s for everyone as when we were able to use them after college at night when they were available we found they were so much better suited to the project and quicker and more efficient to use. I also think because the project is so time consuming we could of got a lot more better quality work done if we had more time for practical lessons and less theory. In comparison we had 1 practical to 2 theory lessons a week that was unnecessary. Practical was very much needed and with only one teacher to see a week it became quite a big problem in getting one on one time with them.
All of the photos used throughout my media project I have taken myself specifically for the media project that you can see below through the planning stages of my work. I had to take these in my own time outside of college or at events I wanted to write about.

In conclusion if I was to do this project again I would make sure I got a lot more work done given the time scale we had to do it in. However I am happy with my final product and feel like I met the requirements of the brief to the best of my ability given the circumstances of the software we were given. I enjoyed doing this project, it was good to get a chance to learn how to use the programmes such as adobe Photoshop and indesign properly as they are good to know how to use if we had to deal with it again and I am glad I had the opportunity.

My Website

The Website

Before I started my website I decided I would look around again at real newspaper websites to get an idea of their layout and structure.I wanted my website to look professional but creative at the same time.
At first I looked at Tabloid and Broadsheet websites including 'The Sun', 'The Times', 'The Daily Star' and 'The Daily Mail'.

TABLOID/BROADSHEET:








As you can see the tabloid and broadsheet newspaper websites are very colourful,with photos to go with the stories aswell as text , they all convey a similar layout ,but my favourite one is the sun, its very busy with a lot going on and it just looks more interesting. Because my target audience is young I think it would be a good idea to stick to that sort of bright and bold layout as it would attract their attention more.

Below are examples of local newspaper websites including 'The Echo' 'The Yellow Advertiser' and 'The Metro'. As you can see they are quite boring in comparision to the layouts about,lacking colour and detail. They are simple and the layout they have chosen works but I think to get my website to appeal to my target audience in the correct way i will have to make my website visually more like a tabloid website but not to such an extent. To keep it looking like a local newspaper web page would, i will take into account that there not as busy because there are not that many headlining stories. So I will fit my work to suit a look that meets both tabloid and local newpaper in the middle.

Newspaper Content: 3. Third Page

I decided to go for an intellectual approach for my third page. The first two were very much about whats going on in the world in terms of the media and student life but I thought for a third page I would concerntrate on academic news.
I decided that in my newspaper each week there would be a local students essay competition every week where the winners essay would get published. For the first essay I chose English language as the subject and then wrote an essay with a theme that would fit the newspaper.
This is the photo I chose to use for the advertisment for it, just a picture I took of my english language text book so people would recognise the course:



Here is the final product of my third page of the newspaper:

Newspaper Content: 2. Second Page

For the second page of my newspaper I labelled it ‘the weekly review’. I wanted to have a page not completely based on the local area just to reflect on what was going on the past week, partly like a media/cultural/art/sport page in one.
Since the Oscars has just been , I decided to write a fashion review of the night as fashion is a very big interest of mine so I thought I would be able to create an interesting review and keep it looking like serious journalism at the same time.
I titled the review ‘Women we Love, In outfits we don’t’ I thought it was catchy and would grab a lot of people’s attention as the Oscars is a globally well known event. Going with the fashion aspect of the page I decided to do an advert to encourage students to apply to the fashion b-Tec course at the college. The image I used I set up to look abstract and arty, I covered a toilet in magazines. The photos came out really well and I thought they could of looked like a student on that courses work as that was the desired effect I was going for. I edited the colour range on Photoshop to make it stand out more. Here is the final result:



I then cropped the date out of the bottom and edited the hue/saturation to make the colour stand out more and make the photo look more proffesional, this was the final product:



The third article for the second page I decided to write about the modular exams and summer re-sits that took place in January, as this was local news it was relevant to inform the readers who would mostly be students at University and College what information they needed for this. So I decided this would be a good fit for the weekly review. To mix up the fashion aspect of the newspaper I decided to use a photo I took of one of the Sport/Science student’s who was awaiting his results.
Here is the photo I used:



Here is the final product of my second page:

Newspaper Content: 1. Front Page

On the Cover

I wanted the first pages of my newspaper to be a good representative of what Hot Gossip is all about. I wanted to show that aswell as catering for students and young peoples social life , it also includes their academic life and general news from around the local area and general media coverage too.

I decided that I would have 3 main stories on the front cover to show a dynamic that will run throughout the newspapers 3 pages.

I decided that I would write all the content with a journalistic approach as if I was covering these articles myself. The tone i used to write in is slightly editorial in the way that its quite opinionated but also leaves enough room for the readers to make their own judgements by questionning alot of what I am writing. I chose to do this because I want readers to be able to have a mind of their own and I hope by voicing mine , they will be able to have something to discuss on a higher intellegence level than just an average conversation , between lessons/ lectures or work.
I feel like this newspaper could really benefit the target audience as its so diverse yet keeping in tune with the priorities of their needs and wants.

The front page consists of:
-A main cover story about the New University housing building thats currently under construction. I chose to write about this because it causing alot of controversy around Southend due to its bold exterior. Some say its a fresh piece of architecture and others think its out of place and too bold. I thought that would be a good place to start as its going on now so its recent and everyone is talking about it , therefore a real local newspaper would more than likely do an aricle about it, which makes mine more authentic. To get a good shot of the whole building I walked up to a high floor of a car park and took a photo of it then edited it in photoshop for a better quality.
Here is the result of the final image i used for the front cover:


-My second story I did a cover article , like a report of Mayhem nightclub. I wrote it as if I had been there professionally covering the night and events and used a picture I took from the night on the cover. I thought this would be relavent as the target audience are at a prime age where clubbing and having a social life is a huge part of their lives. So a nightclub report seemed appropriate.It also helped channel the diversity I am aiming for with the newspaper.For example first the builing article about southends culture then an article about its nightlife. I felt like it shaped the front page well as the stories compliment each other in a good way. Often you find one newspaper has a particluar tone and voice e.g 'right wing' 'left wing'...But I want mine to be more of a creative voice than a particular one.
I used a photo I took of friends from the night to create a fun look and feel:


-After the two stories there wasn't much room left in the layout for another big one so I decided to look at other local newspapers for help as to how to fill small spaces. I decided to just write a short segment as a film review on a popular film at the time 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and when there was no room left, i wrote 'continued on page 5'. It helped alot researching other local newspapers before hand as it was easy to make the paper look more professional.
I also like doing a film review on the front page as its not something that is usually dont so if proved my newspaper to be different and risky to take a chance. It made the newspaper able to project the freshness of its style by mixing up the norm of local newspapers.

Here is the final product of my front page.I am really pleased with the way it has turned out and this it now looks professional:

My Newspaper

After researching as much as i can on local newspapers i have started to formulate my own. The first thing I am deciding on is a name for my news paper. I want something young and catchy that reaches the out to the target audience. I belive if the name of my newspaper isnt so formal younger people like myself are more inclined to pick up a copy.
Here are some names I have thought about:

1. The Southend Gossip
2. Southend's Hot Gossip
3. Spread Southends Word
4. The Southend Way

I belive the name to my newspaper is essential because it has to make a statement and make you want to read it. I also think its important the the place 'Southend' is involved in the title because its what the newspapers based on and the origin of the whole thing. Also because its local and involves alot about the college and university aswell as SOuthen town in general, people who are interested in Southend will be more inclined to read it or find a copy, making it more sucessful.

I have decided on calling my newspaper 'Southend's Hot Gossip' I belive this will appeal more to my target audience as i think its the freshest name out of all four and represents what i what my newspaper to portray.
The main name will be just 'Hot Gossip' but i want the word 'Southend' to clearly sit above it just so its not so long winded.

I have chosen this particular title because due to the target audience I want younger words that represent them as a group and used the word 'Gossip' instead of news because it makes it sound much more exclusive and 'must read' than anything.
I belive my target audience will respond to this and hopefully they will notice that its specifically created for them by one of them.

Title: Southend Hot Gossip

I created the look for my title on Adobe Photoshop.I started off with a bright colour because I wanted it to be bold and eye catching. I chose a palete of 4 colours that I thought worked well together of bright pink , yellow black and white.

I played about with various colour schemes but the last one i chose was the one i decided to go with as you can see:









Before chosing the final font for my title I had to experiment with some otheres before hand as you can see below:


There are 4 fonts used on the title, including 'Impact' and 'Times New Roman' which I have used throughout my project. The other two fonts are for my headline only because i wanted them to stay unique and interesting. I also experimented with these before finalising the design however which you can see below.




LAYOUT:
Here are some designs I have experimented with after looking at various newspapers to see which of mine will work best.

Researching Local Newspapers

The newspaper I intend to create throughout this project is going to be a local newspaper therefore in order to get a more realistic view of what I will be creating I am going to look around my local town for some examples of local newspapers to use as a starting point.

After looking at these local newspapers including 'The Evening Echo' , 'The Metro' and the 'London Lite' I have found that:

Examples of Local Newspapers

The most local newspaper in our area would probably be the 'Evening Echo' and the 'Yellow Advertiser'. Both of which cover news around in and around Essex.
Here are some examples of their front pages for me to get a better understanding of the difference between local and tabloid, to help base my work upon a more realistic and authentic look.

Examples of Tabloid Newspapers

I have used these 3 examples of 'The Sun' ,'The Daily Star' and 'The Daily Express' as examples of Tabloid newspapers. These are just starting points as i do not intend to do a tabloid newspaper, I am creating a local newspaper.
However, now that I have a basic idea of the layout of a newspaper, I am able to begin doing some practical work with basic knowledge behind me, while I will now begin researching local newspapers.

Traits of a Tabloid newspaper:
In Depth Structured Textual Analysis Questions A tabloid is a half sized newspaper, which is particularly suited to a high degree of photographic representation. Characteristics of a tabloid paper such as The Sun would include bold poster style layout and of course cheaper full page advertising and more regular single slots which appeal to advertisers who feel a their product is better promoted in a spot on its own, the tabloid category can also be sub-divided as there is a split between the popular dailies such as The Sun and The Mirror and papers such as the Daily Express and Daily Mail who have both changed from broadsheet to a tabloid in recent years.

News Paper Research

Layout, typical features and technical terms...
Some or all of these may be found on the front pages of newspapers. I have researched these in order to be able to use more technical language throughout my coursework and be able to refer to the terms directly


•Box-out – A small part of the page, shaded in a different colour.


•By-line – he name of the reporter, if they are important is often included at the beginning of the feature, rather than at the end, or not at all.


•Caption – typed text under photographs explaining the image.


•Credits – the author of a feature may be given credit in the form of a beeline. Photographs may have the name of the person who took them or the agency that supplied them alongside them.


•Crosshead – this is a subheading that appears in the body of the text and is centred above the column of text. If it is se to one side then it is called a side-head.


•Exclusive – this means that newspaper and no one else solely cover the story. The paper will pay their interviewees, buying the story so it cannot be used by another paper.


•Feature – not necessarily a ‘news’ item (current affairs), but usually with a human-interest angle presented as a spread.


•Headline – this is the main statement, usually in the largest and boldest font, describing the main story. A banner headline spans the full width of the page.


•Kicker – this is a story designed to stand out from the rest of the page by the use of a different font (typeface) and layout.


•Lead Story - the main story on the front page, usually a splash.


•Lure – a word or phrase directing the reader to look inside the paper at a particular story or feature.


•Masthead – the masthead is the title block or logo identifying the newspaper at the top of the front-page. Sometimes an emblem or a motto is also placed within the masthead. The masthead is often set into a block of black or red print or boxed with a border; the ‘Red-tops’ (The Sun, The Mirror, The News of the World) are categorised by style and the use of a red background in the masthead.


•Menu – the list of contents inside the paper.


•Pugs – these are at the top left and right-hand corners of the paper and are known as the ‘ears’ of the page. The prices of the paper, the logo or a promotion are positioned there. They are well placed to catch the reader’s eye.


•Secondary Lead – this is usually only a picture and headline, it gives a sneak preview of a story that you might find inside the paper.


•Sidebar – when a main feature has an additional box or tinted panel along side of it.


•Splash – the splash is the main story on the front of the paper. The largest headline will accompany this, along with a photograph.


•Spread – a story that covers more than one page.


•Standfirst – this is an introductory paragraph before the start of the feature. Sometimes it may be in bold.


•Strapline – this is an introductory headline below the headline.


•Tag – a word or phrase used to engage a reader’s interest in a story by categorising it e.g. ‘Exclusive’, ‘Sensational’.

NEWSPAPER RESEARCH: Parts of a Newspaper

To begin this project I have started to look at newspapers.

Project Proposal

Project Proposal
For the A2 media project the decided intension is going to be to create 2 pages of a newspaper, a poster for the newspaper and two hyperlinked pages for the papers website, using ‘Adobe Indesign and Photoshop’ to create the two pages of the news paper and poster, then using ‘Dreamweaver’ to create the 2 hyperlinked pages of the website.
The aim is to target the newspaper to a youth audience from 16-25. The chosen target audience is relevant to the topic because the intension is to distribute the newspaper and advertise the website in and around Southend College/University; consisting of advertising:
• Interesting articles about the latest events in the media written by the students of the college and university and articles that have an element of what the students at the college are studying so its relevant to their course and an easy access to aid their work.For example in the first issue of the news paper I am going to focus on English Language , but the next issue could be on a range of courses such as sport science, fashion, art and design, mathematics, science and more.All though I want them to be in context of the course I also want them to be focused on interesting events so they are educational but enjoyable to read.
• The best student night life.
(All the weeks upcoming events from local night clubs ranging from Mayhem, Storm ,Element and Talk including students reviews of their experiences the previous week)
• The best buys around town in the shops including sales that are going on including reviews from Topshop, Riverisland, Republic ,New Look and more.
• All the weeks best celebrity gossip/sports updates.
• The local Cinema (The Odeon) film reviews and upcoming films. Including reviews from students that have already seen them.
• Weather forecast.
• Job advertisements.

Because the newspaper consists of advertising so many local and mainstream businesses I will try to issue contra deals with them advertising them in return on the website and throughtout the newspaper.

I want it to be something helpful and convinient, yet fun to help students like myself plan ahead for the weekend, shopping trips ,cinema visits etc.
It seems people of my age are always complaining of what club to visit at the weekend or where to save money on the cheapest deals around town so it appears there is a gap in the market for this type of newspaper that would be appreciated as its something useful and recreational at the same time, that would prove popular in and around my age group which includes all students in the College and University.