In what ways does your media product use/develop or challenge forms and conventions?
Layout
Before starting my main task of creating a newspaper; I had to conduct some research of other newspapers; like the Bromley Times and The Metro and identify often-used conventions. I established that most papers use a five-column layout for their text making use of the space within a page. However not all papers followed this convention. (Example) For my newspaper I adopted this convention, however I tried my best to avoid making the articles to long-winded or boring. Although I tried to make the articles short and interesting I had to come to a compromise when I made a draft print out and realized that I just didn’t’t have enough text in my articles leaving me with a lot of blank spaces.
Measurement
For a newspaper to look the part, I appreciate that there needs to be a uniform set of measurements so everything fits into perspective. The alignment of columns, advertisements, masthead etc is important to keep the page neat and clearly orientated. For this reason I took numerous measurements from the metro newspaper like the; column width, gutter space and masthead width and length and entered them into the Mac program Indesign. By doing this I was able to give my newspaper a professional look.
Design
All of the adverts and other graphical images like the masthead and plugs where created with the measurements I took from the metro newspaper, at first I did not like the idea of using the measurements from another paper to construct my own; but in time I realized that doing so gave me a basic guideline to creating a professional looking newspaper. On top of this, I now appreciate how important it is to do thing a particular way so my media product could be identified as a newspaper and not mistaken for a magazine. With the design of my masthead I set out to make a logo which described my target market, graphically…… My paper is called “ The Bromley Bite”, for the font of “The” I used a polished joined handwriting styled font which I used to represent an articulate and critical reader; someone who reads an article and forms their own opinion rather than swallowing the ideas of the reporter. For “Bite” I used a basic block type font with rounded edges, personally this represents a neutral stand point however someone else could take a different meaning from it. And for “Bromley” I used a graffiti type font which I saw to represent an urban reader who is not restricted by a stereotype and wants to know what is going on in their area. Moving on to the colours I used thought the paper, I decided to use a bright pink and Light blue colour scheme. Using these colours I was trying to state that my paper was aimed at both males and females by relying on the stereotype that girls like pink and boys like blue. Although it is rather cliché I was hoping that by playing on this would make my intentions clear, however I do accept that the type of articles I produced may not appeal to much to a female audience.
How effective is the combination of my main product and the other ancillary tasks?
Firstly, my newspaper, radio advertisement and poster were created with a youthful target market in mind. However I accept that they media products do not represent this group. Before constructing each text I had to do some research and identify what worked and how I would tailor my product to fit with successful conventions.
Poster
Using Google images I found a number of newspaper posters which promoted and advertised the newspaper, I established that posters for papers such as; the Metro and the Guardian making use of vibrant colours did well to capture the attention of a passer by. More often than not the poster had a creative twist which promoted the brand of the paper and was filled with imagery of the papers livery and colours. Upon reflection I accept that my poster did not do either of these things enough to make a memorable impression on anybody who looked at it. The idea I had was far from creative and had to many blank spaces, I simply created a print screen of my front page and entered some text around the image. The branding was only evident on the masthead which was scaled down on the print screen of the paper; lacking the flair of a production which had to appeal to young people.
Radio Advert
Before I started any planning work I visited rab.com and listened to some of the best radio ads of all time; to get an idea of what worked well in a radio advertisement. From this I learned that witty yet simple ideas often made communication between the institution ( the newspaper owner/ editor/ me) and the audience a lot more efficient. I gathered that once people felt engaged by the ad they would take away a lot more from it then they would the average advertisement. Although I was armed with this knowledge I failed to reflect it through my work. The script was poor and read like a news round, rather than catering to the young I did the complete opposite and produced an advertisement that suited a daytime advertisement slot; when my target audience would be in school.
Newspaper
Out of all of my tasks, I believe the newspaper was the most successful, possibly because I spent more time on it than I did the other task but either way it was a clearer example of the type of product I wanted to produce for a young target audience between the ages of 16 to 21. I made use of the space I had on the page by filling the gaps with adverts for driving lessons, restaurants, album releases etc.
In conclusion two out of the three task where rather weak and did little to support the main task; the newspaper. However I believe that structure of all of the tasks was decent but lacked a defined target audience. Although I knew whom I was catering to, I failed to reflect this through the poster and the radio advertisement.
