Evaluation Feedback: 15/20

Your evaluation demonstrates a proficient understanding of the conventions, importance of audience feedback and combination of products to create a brand. Your final answer for new media technologies is not in depth but the answer is implicit in the rest of the essay.

EBI (to secure grade):

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Evaluation

My media product was a newspaper which I created with another student. The very first thing we studied when starting to plan our newspaper were the conventions of existing media products.

Since our newspaper was designed to be a free, local newspaper, we started to look at local newspapers in our areas. We studied the News Shopper, the Metro, Sevenoaks Chronicle and the Bromley Times.

When designing our new

spaper we decided it would be useful to follow the conventions set out by these like products because it would be instantly recognisable as a newspaper, and would be accessible to many people. We placed the headline and masthead in the top left, as you would see on a real newspaper, and our text was formatted in columns.

We felt that, when set ancillary tasks, we would not be able to access these forms because of the lack of advertising for newspapers. However, almost as soon as we encountered this issue, we began to n

otice that newspapers like the Sun had started displaying advertisments in bus shelters, and the Guardian and Observer were advertising on the sides of buses. We thought this was interesting as we had never seen this done before. However, we have not seen advertisments for local newspapers, but felt that this would probably be down to the fact that these newspapers are generally free and so probably do not have the income to advertise. We also considered that there may not have been a need for advertising - both myself and Jo

e receive our local newspaper, the News Shopper, through the mail, despite the fact that this service was not signed up for. So, even if a lesser proportion of recipients read the newspaper, the delivery of the newspaper was in itself a form of advertising.

We decided to challenge this convention and designed a poster. Since this newspaper was meant to attract a younger audience, we wanted to make it bright, but it is not a magazine - it is a paper designed to attract young people that are interested in local issues. The placement of the gold iPod on the poster is meant to make young people read the paper to enter a competition - it is meant to be an incentive.

I created the gold iPod using Photoshop and we believed that creating an easy-to-see poster that would stand out would be a good combination with our newspaper.

Our second ancillary text was a website. All of the local newspapers we studied had websites, so we felt it would be important to make one. We tried to follow the conventions of these texts as best we could.

I feel that the combination of the main product and ancillary texts is an effective one, as it appeals to our target audience. These young people travel around on buses and in cars all the time; to travel to school, college, to visit friends, go to parties, etc., so they are exposed to advertising constantly- on billboards, bus stations, buses, shop fronts, bulletin boards outside and inside churches, schools, youth groups, shopping centres, libraries, cinemas and parks. They see more advertising than they remember each day- and being part of this target audience ourselves helped us see this. We felt that making a poster in response to this would be a good choice for our task. As for the website, young people are very technologically savvy, and are becoming more so with each technological innovation. Access to th

e internet is widespread and free in places like schools and libraries. Mobile phones are available with contracts that allow free internet access anywhere, anytime. The iPhone and other "smart" phones now allow the installation of apps (applications) which tie into websites, bank accounts, services, RSS feeds from blogs and forums. These innovations have all come about in myself and Joe's lifetime, and as such, we have a better understanding than anyone of the power of these services. Young people are able to access anything, anytime, so a website is perfect for a generation that is so tuned-in to the internet. These ancillary tasks tied in with our newspaper and shared colour schemes so that they can be identified together, and have allowed us, theoretically, to reach our target audience.

The main things we learned while collecting audience feedback from our peer groups were that people preferred a conventional, simple website with little loading time to something that was more entertaining to look at. We were told that young people did not usually have the patience to wait for websites to load - checking the news was not a priority for young people. So, when they had a minute, they would log on to check the headlines, but would give up if the page did not load quickly. Therefore myself and Joe decided to keep our website as minimalist as possible, giving it a clean, simple feel in favor of something elaborate.

We also learned from our audience that they prefer websites that are easy to navigate, rather than having to look through the whole website to find what they are looking for. We decided then to add a clear navigation bar so that everything could be found easily and added a search bar. This aids navigation and speeds up the process of finding the type of news that is required. We also learned that our target audience like to check the news using iPhone apps or Blackberrys, and a clear navigation bar separating all the information into sections is easier to read on a small screen.

We had to learn a great deal about new media technologies in order to complete our projects. More important than the knowledge of individual hardware and software was the knowledge of collaborating these products to create one image or product.

For instance, the picture to the left shows a gold iPod. In order to create this, we had to set up a white background and take a good quality picture using a DSLR. This then had to be uploaded to Photoshop, where we edited out the white background and changed the colour to make the iPod look special. The iPod was originally dark blue, so finding out how to make the gold look convincing was a challenge. Then, the photoshop file had to be exported to InDesign - a piece of software I have very little knowledge of - to be placed into our newspaper. The same thing had to be done with iWeb for our website. Of course, I have also learned how to use Blogger to document my work, iCal to plan it, and Slideshare to present certain elements of my work.

This whole project has been a complex collaboration of different software, and more importantly, finding out which software does specific things well. We would decide to create an image in Photoshop, place it on the layout of our newspaper in InDesign - it was important to use each piece of software to do the things we thought that software would do best, and then collaborate it.

This media project has taught me how to master using a new media innovation in a short space of time so that I could get the best of that software and move on to something else so that the product could be finished.

Ancillary Tasks - Website

This is a screenshot of the website. We created this following the convention that usually the stories are different on the website than on that day's newspaper. This is because they are more up to date and generally feature a newer story than the paper printed that morning.

Ancillary Tasks - Poster

This is the poster we created. We wanted to keep the colour scheme close to the one for the newspaper so that the two may be associated, and the gold iPod is an incentive to read the newspaper.

Newspaper

Newspaper Drafts

These are the draft layouts that we created. The top image is the front page and the bottom image is the inside sheet. We tried to stick to conventions as much as possible in creating this sketch, and now have a rough idea of the colours and fonts we want to use.

Planning grade: 13/20

Planning is mostly proficient with some excellent research into similar products.

www:
Interesting analysis of 2 local papers (conventions i.e. columns, masthead, font, integration of elements)
Good proposal
Good consideration of target audience
work in on time with minimal support

ebi:
Better presentation of work required
upload photos for paper with annotations
RIVALING analysis of local papers x 4 (in depth discussion)
story write ups
details of sources for stories
calendar to show planning

Target Audience

The target audience for local papers in general are local residents, so obviously, there is a great range for these papers. Local papers are delivered or made available to residents in a certain area. Obviously, residents would include a large number of different types of people - different ages, jobs, etcetera. The content of local newspapers tend to be largely based around young people - school achievements in the area, council issues, local stories about people in the area. This type of news would likely appeal to a middle-aged person because they would send their children to school and therefore care about the local issues about schools and councils. However, the news content itself and the style of journalism is low-brow in terms of language and the stories selected, so it would not appeal to somebody with a semi-professional or professional job. I think the audience for local newspapers would be working class middle-aged adults.

Myself and Joe studied the News Shopper, Sevenoaks Chronicle, The Bromley Times and the Metro. The News Shopper covers Bromley, Bexley, Dartford, Gravesend, Greenwich, and Lewisham and is either delivered to residents' houses or made available in local newsagents.

This type of paper is designed to appeal to middle-aged, working class people. We can see this because the content of the newspaper is largely based around council issues and, again, schooling. This tends to be the kind of news that would appeal to parents and people that don't necessarily commute because commuters tend to work in the city, which means they tend to have more professional jobs and will also have access to other free papers like the Metro.

The Metro is interesting because is differs from the other papers we looked at. It is available for free at stations and on the Tube, and therefore is designed to appeal to commuters. The language and content is instantly more high-brow than the type of content in the News Shopper. The Metro tends to have arts-type stories quite frequently and therefore is a little more sophisticated than the stories in the News Shopper. So, we can conclude that the Metro is designed to appeal to commuters. They will be around 25-45 years old and will have semi-professional to professional jobs.

The demographics of the areas can be considered, too - the Metro is circulating in London, a very wealthy area because of the huge amount of highly-paid jobs, tourist revenue, and the obvious point being that it is a city, and cities tend to be centres for wealth. In London, there are hundreds of galleries, attractions, entertainments, and the Metro caters to these.

We are designing our paper to appeal to young people, as there seems to be a gap in the market for this. For some time, the London Lite catered for this group - the content was mostly about celebrities, and was written in relaxed, casual language. However the London Lite is not around anymore, and we thought it would be interesting to create a newspaper for young people.

We wanted to make the newspaper about local issues - something like the News Shopper but for younger people. This would cover local issues and what is going on in schools, young people's acheivements, competitions, so that they can keep up with events.

The audience for this kind of paper would be mostly teenagers, from 14 to around 17, and they would be students. Obviously, they would be unemployed as they are at school, or may have a part-time job.

Using the VALS system, these young people would be Experiencers; young kids that spend their income on experiences with new products, new music, but get bored easily. They are rebellious and like to keep up with their friends.

They might also be considered Trendies or Groupies - the kids want to keep up with their friends and be accepted.

Researching Similar Products

Myself and Joe chose this newspaper to look at first because it is our local free newspaper.

We wanted to stu

dy the conventions of like products becau

se our newspaper should follow those conventions. The conventions we spotted are as follows.

The title for this newspaper is positioned at the top of the page, this appears typical for all newspapers. It is in a bold font for ease of identification. Adverts are positioned in a line underneath, to attract the readers' attention with an inside story or a competition. This makes the paper eye catchi

ng and attractive to potential readers.

The headline is in bold font and is very large. It uses as few words as possible to convey the main story. Again, this attracts the attention of potential readers.

The photograph does not have anything to do with the main story, but it does almost fool the viewer into believing, at first glance, that it does, because of its placement. It appeals to our nature to be interested in unfortunate or gruesome things, and may tempt the audience into reading the paper for this reason.

Adverts are displayed in a list with a variety of colours to draw attention. As there are likely 'classifieds' type adverts inside, it becomes obvious how the newspaper earns its revenue.

The text under the headline; "'distressed' teacher found at base of cliffs" gives a little more information but still withholds the details, and this, obviously is how we are drawn to reading the paper.

The text is arranged in two columns, three if you include the section to the left of the page. The font is very small so no detail can be seen from afar.

The mode of address is quite casual but is not entertaining. This suggests that it is aimed towards a working-class, middle aged person, who is worried about the issues in the paper.

This is the Metro, it is a newspaper that is free at train stations, newsagents in the city, tube lines, etc.

The title is slightly different in this case, it is positioned in the top left, although it is still at the top of the page. It is in white, on a navy background, so it stands out, as do

es the 'free' banner in the top left corner. The font is a sans serif (it lacks bridges) and it shares that with the News Shopper, however the Metro title is even more modern because of the odd angles and the bold presentation of the font. This suggests it is aimed at a younger audience than the News Shopper.

The rest of the page is set out a bit differently as well, as the headline is

positioned closer to the right, with the 'in briefs' down the left side, as opposed to the way the News Shopper is set out. The in briefs advertise what is in the rest of the paper.

Again, the main picture has nothing to do with the story - it is a picture of the model Lily Cole at the premiere of a film. I think they have used this picture to attract people to pick it up as we are all interested in beauty. The representation is that it is good to put women on the front of newspapers because women are interesting to read about - for men, perhaps it is because they are attractive and aesthetically pleasing, and therefore interesting to look at and read about, for women, they are idols to admire and look up to, and also therefore interesting for mostly the same reasons. So it would make sense that a woman's picture is on the front of the paper, to attract readers, and I believe that most copies of the Metro I have seen while travelling into the city have indeed had pictures of female celebrities on the front page.

Again, the font size is small, an assumed uniform font for all papers.

The paper overall is less colourful

and confusing than the News Shopper. The layout is cleaner and more modern and that suggests it is designed to interest people who may no have read the paper before, and its clean layout means that people would be attracted to the paper, even if they are in a hurry, whereas somebody glancing at the News Shopper may be confused by the layout and colour.

The mode of address is very casual. It uses slang ('thugs', 'crossdressers'

, 'yobs') and tells the story in an almost comical manner, as if you are speaking to a friend. Again, this suggests that the paper is aimed towards a younger audience.

The first thing that struck me about this paper was its headline and title in a font with serifs. This instantly told me it was probably a paper aimed at older people, in contrast to the Metro. On the right, there is a picture of David Beckham, which instantly draws the attention of the viewer because of his striking red T-shirt next to the blue of the title. Adverts are places under the title and on the right hand side, which is a typical layout and doesn't break any conventions. I think this newspaper is meant to be a typical newspaper- probably aimed at older people because of the text and conventional layout.

I think when creating our newspaper, we should keep in mind that serif fonts are associated with older readers, in order to make pur newspaper appeal to our target audience.

I think the Sevenoaks Chronicle is the most unconventional newspaper I have looked at so far. The title is in a sans serif font, the 'chronicle' in a cobalt blue that looks professional and clean. It gives the newspaper a youthful image, much like the Metro. However, the title completely conflicts with the use of a serif font for the headline, which makes the newspaper seem old-fashioned and not in-keeping with the style of the title at all.

The layout is quite unconventional, too. The title is centred instead of off to the left side. The main picture appears to be a cartoon instead of a photograph and the cobalt blue is displayed throughout the frontpage to tie the whole layout together. The possible target audience for this paper, I think, is quite confused. It has elements of both modern and old-fashioned layout and usage of text and I think when we create our newspaper, we should tie all the fonts in together and try to represent the same audience through everything that is printed on the front page.