Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For the newspaper we were creating a local newspaper and trying to produce and in much way replicate the local newspaper within our area. Within our research I looked at a national newspaper, to improve my knowledge of layout techniques within media. By getting a wider range on knowledge from my research help me to target a wider audience by including different techniques to my newspapers. We took techniques from the News Guardian has they have appealed to a wide audience through their website and the newspaper itself.

Depending of the type of the newspaper mainly depends on the time of the stories with it in, such as local newspaper try to just keep to just the news within that area, as it more personal for the public within that area, whereas The Time or The Sun has an wider range of stories which are link to people throughout the UK. When it comes to our newspaper we want to have a fair amount of both but at the same time we still wanted to keep it personal the public within area but add a new  effect local newspaper would do which was to have an few national stories that would appeal to people throughout all the UK. As all our stories were true stories and were based on the during main headlines in the news at the time, has help to improve our newspapers by have the information more interesting and appealing to many people and help to keep the newspaper as real was we could.

Also throughout the newspaper we keep the same style running through all the newspaper, website and poster. Therefore this makes our newspaper successful and similar to the original companies out there. It achieve this we used the same fonts, colour scheme and titles throughout, showing the reader the links between them all, e.g on all three ancillary tasks our masthead/title, ‘News Weekly’ was noticeable within it being in the same font and colour on all three ancillary tasks.

Overall I think our newspaper look realistic and appeal to the whole audience and by including selection parts from both local and national newspapers has help to improve our newspaper and make it more appeal to wider range. Within the newspaper, we included an main part of a national newspaper that many local newspapers wouldn’t use, which was to included an right hand side column that ran throughout every page in the newspaper and keep the same style and colour scheme within it, the other things that got changed on the other pages then the front cover was the stories and adverts that would be in it. On the front cover in the right hand side column, we included many headlines of stories that would be in the newspaper, which we thought would made the newspaper appeal to audience as it give the audience an understanding of what is in the paper itself. I strongly agree that it was important to include a balance of both types of papers, which I think we successful achieve in out newspaper. On the other hand we have to also try to keep the newspaper a little more to the local side, and we did this by including an range of different advert for local business such as So So hairdressers, by including this local advert shown the read that it is an local newspaper not just a other newspaper.

When it come to our poster and adding the techniques to it, we found it hard to get the quality we did within our other task, as we feel the website has let us down a little. The website we research was well layout and well presented, were as ours is a little basic and spread out a bit. I believe if we had a more of an understanding of how to use the programme, before starting on our website, it could have been better and to a better quality. Even though we used headline and stories from our newspaper, I believe the website would of linked a little more with the rest of the tasks we had to do. I feel on all newspaper website, the advert grad the reader’s attention more than the stories does, by the use of colours and style/fonts within them. Therefore I we didn’t included as many advert as original companies would, but we felt like we have to include some to make it more original.  

I believe our poster is one of our strong parts throughout this as it eye catching and appealing to all, by the amount of detail within it. Our poster is different to other newspaper poster, was we had to advertise the newspaper and the area of it not just the story within it like many newspaper companies do. I feel the way in which we have advertise our newspaper is a better and more a appealing way then exist one out there, as I myself don’t really feel the headline poster boards are very appealing even though they aren’t used a lot. Within researching the poster, I felt that there wasn’t many to research and compare our poster to. Overall I feel it was an successful task and advertise our newspaper well and links great with the newspaper not just by the way we have kept the same font and title within it but how we have actually used our own newspaper that we had create to make our paper boat with.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Throughout the making of our main product and ancillary text, we used the same colour scheme throughout it all. I felt that this worked well as it makes the product more original and shows the readers the links between all our pieces. The colour scheme we used, was an result from our survey, which help us to know that the colours would appeal to our readers. The colours scheme worked well as the blues linked with the area the coast and the red contrasts with the blue, which help us to headlight selection areas of our work. Throughout the product we kept with the same font and used the same title on all the tasks to some the connexion between all the pieces.
Throughout the making of the main task and the ancillary texts we sectioned a small amount of images and semictic images that we would use on all our peieces to keep the connexion and the same effect running throgh them all to show to our audinece that three pieces join together.

We linked the post with our other two piece with some things that would catch the readers eye and for them to grab striaght away what the poster goes with. We did this by including the newspaper company title on the bottom of the poster, but keeping it the same colours and front as the title on the newspaper and the website. Also we included the newspaper itself within the poster my making our paper boot out of our newspaper we had made, by doing this it the readers a little feel of what the newspaper is going to look like. It was quite hard to link the post to our other two piece as it didn't really include many pictures or text on as we wanted to keep it eye catching and basic for the readers to understand and read.

Whereas linking the poster and the website together was a lot easier as we we could include a bigger range of things on the website what would appeal to different readers, whereas the poster had to appeal to all our readers. There was many links throughout these two piece as they both included quite a lot of the same information such as stories, colour scheme, and a similar layout. With the website having to included two pages give us the opportunity to spread our information our more, but might we had to make sure we linked both pages together plus linked the two pages with the poster and the newspaper itself. The website included the same title as my newspaper but also have a similar layout due to the red lines to section out the stories. Both the newspaper and the website had the same photography on which shows a strong connexion between them.

If I would to redo this product, I would get more of an understanding of the software we would be using before starting on any of it, which would help us to layout out both our stories and photographies better. Both our main task and ancillary task were well linked together but i feel now looking back on my work I could of had a stronger link with my newspaper and poster if i had layout my poster in a different way.

 

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have achieved positive feedback and comments about our products, when asked to look and evaluation out products; we also asked them to compare it against other local newspapers.

"Your Newspaper has a similar layout to local newspaper within my area"

"Has a strong link with real companies local newspapers"

Overall we received positives feedback about our tasks and even though the website was the weakness part to our product we still achieved positive feedback from many.

"Your website has a real life effect to it"

"Great layout and colour scheme throughout your website"

Throughout the feedback, many people notice the amount of time and detail we had included with them. Many people was interested in the fact our local newspaper included many local news but also a few national news which made our newspaper different to many our local newspapers.

Even though some of our stories was aimed at them as a target audience themselves, they could see how we had to included many different types of stories to make sure our newspaper would appeal to all our audience in some way or another.

Overall our feedback was positive throughout, we know ourselves that there could still be changes and improvements to it, such as the website could of been improve but as we were working on an time scale, the improvements could not have been made due to the problems we had with the software.  Our timescale and weakness knowledges of the sortware we used for the website, didnt get in the way of the positive feedback we got for our audiences.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Before starting on the task me and my partner both had experience using technologies, due to the tproject in the past.

Using Microsoft Publisher, we created all our computer version for our planning and drafts for most of our tasks and then when coming to our final piece over writing on top of our layouts as much as we can print screen our process while we went along. When using this software I felt comfortable using, as I have used it many times before, which might i had some kind experiences in it. We found it easy to place images and text boxes while creating our columns for the stories. Having this experience in this software was a useful tool to making an successful newspaper, as it helped to improve the quliaty the final piece and also by by having this experience improved my time scale. Even though i used Microsoft Publisher to create my task it, i used firework to edit and create my photograhpys for my final pieces. 

In my research I used as much useful local products as I could, the aim was to create a local newspaper, poster advertising the newspaper and a two page website for the newspaper. Throughout the task I had to use a range of software’s for different part of the task, I used Macromedia Fireworks.

I used Macromedia firework to help we edit images and text for my research, planning and for the final product. I mainly used this software for create my poster, as I created my poster on this software as it was the best way to link both my background of the lighthouse and my paper boat together as it allowed you to overlap images and text. when making our poster we used a layering technique which was used to add brightness and colour to our photograhpys but also to set one picture above another to give a effect as if both pictures were taking as one. When using Firework it was difficult at the begining as didnt have much experience in it, but once using it more me and my partner find it easier to control and use.

The biggest part of the product I felt was using Microsoft Expression for the website, as this programme was new to me and my partner and we didn’t have enough knowledge about the programme to just get straight on with the task, which meant with the time we provide for creating our website had to increase to give us time to get our head around the tools in it. Once we got a little knowledge of the software we tried our best to create the Two page website that we had to create, one we got started with it by the end of creating the website we have an better understanding of how to use the software an little more.

With the planning I used information I found during my research time and also knowledge I have from last year media text.  We felt it would have been best to keep the target audience similar to usual newspaper companies. As with our survey we only asked our class mates their thought on local newspaper, we tried to included more similar stories and techniques as original newspaper companies to make sure our newspaper was targeted at all age range. Overall I think our product was an success and have allowed use to get an basic understanding of what it like in the real media career and we have hit all our aims in making an newspaper as we have included current news, local and national stories to be produced into on paper.