In all stages of the coursework I have tried to portray the conventions of newspapers in my own media product. Although I tried to create a sense of originality to my work it still had to fit in with the conventions of Newspapers to become clear as to what it was I was introducing and promoting. As my newspaper shows the same text layout as other local newspapers like the ones I analyzed such as The Newshopper and The South London Press. This layout would consist of the text being in columns and aligned to the left to use most of the space that is available. Another similar example of a newspaper convention is the logo and Masthead at the top of the page. These are examples of how my newspaper is similar to other local newspapers that currently exist in the industry.
My newspaper also uses different forms and conventions of real media products as it uses much brighter colours than existing local newspapers. I had chosen to use brighter colours for the newspaper as we are targeting a new audience and had to draw attention to the reader to create a fan base and not blend in with other local newspapers. The brighter colours are also very attractive to a younger audience and this can broaden the audience originally targeted. The advertisements that are along the right hand side of the page are very associated to do with the community and is a very good prospect to small local companies in the area as on a new local newspaper, the audience are more likely to take and interest in the first issue than any other just to cast their views on it and purely for the nosiness factor. Another difference of forms and conventions to existing local newspapers is the newspapers Title/Masthead as although it is a continuous style of font and uses the same colour, it actually stands out more and makes a big impact on the page, this is down to the techniques I have used of Italics and different font of “Imprint MT Shadow” unlike the usual suspect fonts used in newspapers. The different sized fonts for “Kent” and “Flash” also looks unusual but is eye-catching as the word Flash is quite a strong word and the font is quite bold and the use of words and style in which it is written makes a big impression that looks like more of a symbolisation of the newspaper and not just a title. The title also doesn’t follow ordinary Black and easy to print conventions of a masthead as it is a bright blue and it makes more of an impact as it can’t be compared to any other newspaper as it looks that much livelier and therefore is typically more stylish and appealing to attracting young people as long as the correct criteria is also put in the newspaper which on this issue it does as one of the main articles is about a local Sixth Form college decorating their school. Although the conventions helped me in getting all 'settings' for a Newspaper, I needed to add my own and other original ideas from the audience so as to have an edge over the other many newspapers that are published in the area as in the first issue it is desperatly important to earn respect of readers and win the readers from other competitors in the Print Market.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
From my research I felt that the combination of products for the newspaper that promoted the main product had to be reflected in all the ancilliary texts with blended elements used on each of the ancillary tasks to make the newspaper as familiar to its new found audience as possible.
Also from the research I selected General Newspaper conventions and also Local knowledge to apply these conventions to creating my own Newspaper so as to meet the audiences criteria of what a local newspaper should do and I have followed this well as it meets all these targets and succeeds in capturing the readers attention and imagination along side the advertised ancillary texts and looking very attractive to the eye.
The effectiveness of my local newspaper achieves it expectations in respect that the audience feedback was good mainly throughout all the Newspaper
drafts and particaulrly in the final draft which I asked the questions to my audience,
"In this draft of a local newspaper, how well would you rate its appearance?"
"Do you think this would be a good enough issue to sell to a local community, despite the decline in local newspapers and the economical climate at the moment?"
"Would you be interested in reading this local newspaper and what is it that would draw you into reading?"
For the poster I had many different idea's all of which was manipulated and had different backgrounds and elements to them which represented different things, one of the drafts for example was "Kent Flash" on a background of a coloured barcode, the idea of barcode came from a "Sales" Perspective and the colours originated from the analysis of the guardian newspaper which I analysed and percieved the idea of colours to attract a larger audience that doesn't specifically apply to a certain group of people and is particularly effective in attracting young people.
However after evaluating my own draft I felt other than the representation of these elements the product didn't signify any real meaning as to what Kent Flash was and I wasn't able to add any more elements without the poster looking overcrowded and bombarbed with information unlike the basic poster yet energetic one by the Guardian which I based the original thought on.
My end version of the poster was an original idea, using the idea that "less is more" which I also found from the analysis of other newpaper posters. I tried to stick to this when designing but making it effective all the same when producing the poster. I think that overall the image makes the biggest statement on the photo with the text supporting the image. It is a very simple image but very appealing, the photo brings together a sense of community which is what the newspaper stands for and also is advertising for the local community, it also gives the audience the feeling and sense of home and British Traditions which today is admired by Society in Britain.
For the website I created alongside the poster, I took my time on it and after creating the Newspaper it was quite easy to add all the content as it was quite a lot of the same information I was using as it was all relevant and tied in with the newspaper format. I felt that Piczo, the programme used to design my website I was able to give the website a good format and portray an organised but effective and similar style to the newspaper, I had to add some extra content as I only created the first two pages of my Newspaper and therefore didnt include any articles of News updates which included Sport/Jobs/Property etc and there was a lot more pages and spaces to fill on the newspaper website but with the information I knew it was easy to create articles and use images on sport and leisure within my local area being that I am already part of the local community and can find out these things from most existing local newspapers anyway and using them again in basing conventions on. These extra pages also provide a larger balance of interests available for the audience so this ancillary text was probably the best in obtaining a larger audience that appeals to more people.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The audience feedback I have received has been very useful in selecting and viewing from the opinion of another reader how well each product is in terms of is it good enough for production, what could be enhanced and from this it has made me become more critical of my own work due to having discussions about the positive and negatives and finding out explanations as to why this was of their judgement, the positive feedback was very uplifting and very appreciated especially the detailed honest opinions of some. I am a highly critical person anyway of any tasks that I take on and so when receiving positive feedback I was pleased and it gave me a clear perspective on the product alone but when analysing afterwards I always looked at the product with an open mind and debated whether the positive feedback was accurate. I found that the views I did receive were quite unique and one persons view could differentiate from another quite substantially so my own personal feeling towards the products I had completed was the deciding cast on any amendments were needed. I found this was particularly the case with the poster as I had many unclear reviews which wasn’t beneficial to me as I had spent a lot of time on each however personally I couldn’t construct the poster in a media context to the way I wanted to and therefore used the initial conventions to work around it and see what I came up with. At the end of the day however I knew my opinion could bias feedback and so I tried to get as much feedback as possible so as the more I got, the more I could play around with the layout. The feedback from my teacher was good and also friends gave valid opinions. Any negative feedback I received I looked upon as constructive as there was always room for improvement, in most of the products. So for me Audience feedback was vital in producing something that I was completely satisfied and happy with that was successful in achieving its goal. On many occasions when the drafting of my newspaper and ancillary tasks were not fitting in with the standards I wanted them to be at and due to feedback, I started the task from scratch meant I felt huge disappointment however this only spurred me on to do better and I learnt from previous mistakes and could try many more idea’s and use different inspirations. In the long run scrapping of work was a good thing as it meant I had a lot more work to show and evaluate. I have included a copy of Audience feedback document under my blog which you will also find to back up this evaluation.
I recieved Audience feedback in many useful ways, including Social Networking sites such as Facebook, I thought this was a good way of asking friends. I also used questionnaires and also just by walking around and asking differnent people what their initial thought of the work was provided me with instantaneous honest and spontaneous reviews.
Afterwards I thought of a really good and useful way in which I could have asked for feedback. After emailing many editors of local newspapers from the Kent region regarding feedback I should have shown them the final product and asked for thier opinion, this would have benefited me in a major way because they have the background knowledge and this would have given me an insight into the Print Industry.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
To achieve high standards in my media work, it is highly important to use media technologies for all processes.
For all sections of this work I have had to use technological devices
Programmes of media technology I used were was:
Internet (Blogger/Piczo/Google for finding sites useful for research)
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Word
Paint
To show use of different Media Technological Devices I also used for the first time, Apple Mac Computers and used the programme Adobe Idesign on them. However as I was a beginner in using it I found it a struggle to get used to it so decided not to waste any more time and so I reverted back to the original computer I was using.
For the research stage of the coursework, I was looking for designs and previous ideas of Local Newspapers as a starting point to base mine on and to find out the conventions of local Newspapers and to find out their values which I did using the Internet.
Also within the research stage I completed a questionnaire which enabled me to find out what readers wanted to see in Local Newspapers and I found that the overall concept was “It has to be local so therefore the information must be finds from the area however it must benefit the local community and they must be interested so aim everything towards them and involve them”.
The next stage was planning and designing a local newspaper so as I could carry out a basic layout and to add elements later, this included rough drawings and then uploading it to computer and creating the basic concept of it on the computer.
For the main part of creating the newspaper I used Microsoft publisher, this allowed me to work with both text and images easily and style in the perfect format I wanted. When getting together all my elements I used some of my own of which I took specifically for the Articles used both for the local Newspaper and Newspaper website, I then edited some of the images using Photoshop which enabled me to manipulate the pictures so they looked better in my production and was sized up well. It was quite difficult to use as it is quite a complicated programme but I had used it before so I knew all the basic skills to correct any imperfections on my photos.
In designing both the newspaper and poster was where I tried to use IDesign but switched back to Publisher which I found much easier to do, the only time any changes needed to be made was after audience feedback.
When creating my website, I started using Dreamweaver as I had previous experience of web designing before and using this particular programme but the problem I encountered here was loading it live on to the Web and it was hassle trying to use the one computer each time I needed to build on my website because only the one computer had the programme uploaded onto it and this proved difficult during school holidays as I couldn’t work on this part of the project which proved to be the most difficult for myself. There were a lot of limits also to the programme as it was an old version of Dreamweaver that was installed onto the computer and it was very difficult to do certain things on it. After some thought I used the Piczo website which is a website builder which allows you to build on for free and although it also had some limitations as I had wanted to upload a Search Bar onto my website, Piczo wouldn’t allow it so I had to overcome this but eventually I finished the website.
I was also knew to using Blogging and the account was set up and the more I used Blogger.com the more naturally it come to posting posts, and it actually is quite a simple and convenient way of sharing information and I prefer this way a lot more than handing in coursework in a paper format. The only problem I found with Blogger at the start was uploading documents to Google Docs as if I had a lot of elements on the page such as the Newspaper, it would loose its format so I just stuck to uploading most of my documents as pictures.
The Evaluation stage was no problem to me either, I can quite happily put my thoughts into writing and it was much easier for me to do that than to use any other methods of evaulating my coursework like the other two options of a video review or interview process although this would have been good and showed an array of "technological media" I felt more comforatble in using this process.
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