Stepping Up week – Summer Work Assignment

Stepping Up week – Summer Work Assignment

Brief 5

The first two pages of a local newspaper, together with both of the following:

A poster for the newspaper

Two hyperlinked pages from the paper’s website

Video on the website

Page 1 - Front page 

Page 2

Page 3

Home page - newspaper

Hyperlink 1

Hyperlink 2

Poster

Rationale - genre/sub-genre and target audience

Colour Scheme

For the newspaper flat plan I have decided to use colours that would be conventionally used in a newspaper and so looked at other newspapers that are released in my area. From that research I have decided to use red and black for the masthead of the newspaper as most of the mastheads I have researched have used red in the masthead.  The target audience that I will be focusing on is the age between 15-45 years of age as I feel that this particular age groups have a mature outlook on the news and because this is a particularly young audience I will be using bright primary colours to attract focus to the newspaper as many other newspaper that have an older audience tend to use although primary colours however they are a lot darker and a lot more mature.

There are two reason behind using black instead of white for the masthead and the first reason is because I want the masthead to stand out over the rest of the text and so I will be putting a red fill around the masthead but I want the black text to match the rest of the writing on the page and the second reason why I have chosen to use black text is because the majority of other newspapers use the white and red combination and because this is a new launch of a new newspaper I wanted to do something that was a little different to the norm of other newspapers and I know you have to do a little more than change a few colours around on the front of the newspaper and that is why I have carefully chosen the other colours in and around the magazine carefully. 

For example the competitions that will be placed in the newspaper will have a yellow fill around the text (and image) and I have chosen to use yellow as the meaning of this colour is richness, money and happiness and I think that when you enter a completion these are the things you want to gain in the end result.

I have also used another specific colour when designing the newspaper and that is green and I have chosen this colour for the advertisement as I feel that when you are trying to promote something you want to stand out on the page, the meaning of this colour is natural and I want to use these different colours as these are the primary colours and they work well together.



Frame

When designing the new local newspaper I have used articles, competitions and advertisement to frame the main articles and I have tried to keep the different features of the newspaper level, for example the main image and the main article are both level with the advertisement so not to detract from the advertisement  as whatever is placed in there should have chance as getting noticed as much as the leading storylines.

Layout

The layout that I have tried to create for this newspaper is that it is well structured and everything is ordered and the different features are nearly in the same place on each page be that on the internet or in the actual newspaper. For example the main article for the newspaper and online newspaper has been positioned near the top of the page underneath the masthead and hyperlinks and this is what my target audience will expect when reading a newspaper.

Font

For the font for the newspaper I have decided to use Times New Roman for the articles as this is what is conventional for a newspaper as this font have little tails at the end of each word however people find this easy enough to read and this is also what my target audience will be expecting from reading a newspaper.

For example you can get more extreme type of tails when using different types of font:

AaBbCc - Times New Roman

AaBbCc - Vivaldi

AaBbCc - Arabic Typesetting

AaBbCc - MingLiU

Style

These flat plans are to be in the style of a newspaper and so have used the local newspapers to help me to look at the style and layout of the newspaper. I have found that looking at newspapers they are a lot more structured and formal in comparison to a magazine, which is what I studied last year. One thing that has stood out quite a bit is the fact there is only minimal colour in a newspaper as the background is white, writing for the articles is always black and it is only ever the competitions, advertisement , article images and the masthead which uses strong colours and I think that this helps to attract your attention to the colour on the page and in some newspaper it can have the adverse affect as it an make some people just want to look at the less strong colours on the page - the actual article.

Composition

The composition for a newspaper is also different from a magazine as the editor of the magazine has chosen very carefully when placing bright and bold amounts of colour around the page and they have chosen in certain areas so that usually the main article of that page has got a colour frame around it. 

The composition for this newspaper is structurally easy to follow because of the positioning of main articles/images and smaller articles/images/compositions/advertisements.