Brief

The Brief

The brief is to research make my own local newspaper that covers local news stories and has the aspects of a real newspaper, as well as a fully operational website and first two pages of a newspaper.

Website Comparison 2

Daily Mail & The Guardian

The other two newspaper websites I will be comparing, these two newspaper sites will be the daily Mail and The Guardian. These two sites are very different in layout and design style, what they have in similarities is that the colour scheme is the same with blue and white keeping it very simple and limited on colour. the homepage for The Guardian is very simple and neat with separate columns for each article category making it far easier for the reader,  the top category is the top headlines with the big main news stories that have the most popularity with politics and crime being the main focus.

Looking at the Daily Mail's design and layout it is very different, the layout is a lot more cluttered and confusing to find a specific news article, articles are scattered around the page also making the homepage very long, some articles like celebrity news and entertainment are placed on the right hand column which in a way makes them easier to find and pick.

The top bar has a lot more categories that the Guardian as well, giving the readers more choice and a variety of news stories that the Guardian may not have. On the Daily Mail it shows that most of the articles especially the smaller news articles are mainly focussing on entertainment and celebrity news, these stories are featured a lot as they are very easy to read and prove to be very popular with most audiences such as women who are more likely to read the celebrity news, also with each story only a couple of paragraphs each which keeps the reader going and interested in the news article instead without them becoming bored, as longer paragraphs are more boring for the viewer to read loosing interest in the article.

The Daily mail has a advantage over the Guardian for its popularity as its the most read newspaper in the UK giving it the largest amount of readers from 23 million a month, this is probably due to its huge amount of content compared to the guardian as said before, the more content the newspaper gives the more readers it will attract boosting its popularity amongst readers. As for the huge amount of content it does not focus on serious news its more about entertainment, readers who prefer a more serious read would be more likely to read the Guardian in return as it contains more serious news stories.

Masthead Research

Findings of Research:

What I have found from my research is that the masthead has to be simple with limited colours that does not distract the the reader, the font that is mainly used in mastheads are old fashioned fonts such as Old Times Roman and bodoni, the colours I should use must be plain simple colours such as blue,red as examples. other colours are less used as they do not appeal to the audience and distract the viewer. a mascot or image above, below or next to the masthead is optional but it must relate to the newspaper name or purpose so it does not look out of place.

Feedback & Self Evaluation

Feedback & Self Evaluation

 Overall evaluation

I have gathered all the information I had received from the audience both from the newspaper, website, poster and the newspaper name and have made a evaluation from this information on how overall my work was and what could be improved or changed.
Staring off with the newspaper name I had mostly good feedback and the audience liked the design of the newspaper and that it had the villages coat of arms which most people do not know of and this also gives some history to the area and the newspaper, the font style fits on well with the logo and name making it look as if effort was put into it and not mock up with no thought, the name is easy to remember and simple for the audience. The style of the logo is also a change from other existing logos and they do not have the same amount of detail put into them and the crest makes it stand out more from the others.
The feedback I received overall was mixed, the content was there but most of the audience thought that the layout let it down, it looked out of place and mixed so it looked rushed. The stories could of been more fleshed out with more extensive detail rather than limited with information. The colour scheme was suitable and fitted like with the newspaper website, some of the feedback also said that some of the stories such as the main headline had a good amount of detail and story into it keeping the reader reading on and not loosing interest.

The feedback form the poster mainly pointed how much space available on the poster that could of been used up such as having another headline instead of one and how simple the poster was compared to most newspaper posters and billboards adding how much could be put into it.
The audience feedback gathered overall from the website was as well good but had mixed results, the main improvements that the website needed was the lack of the amount of content on all the pages, there were too many advertisement which made the site looking like it was more focused on them instead of the actually news stories. the colour scheme was suitable but did make some parts of the site pop out which other sites do not have as they only use lack and white with no actual colour scheme for the site. the layout was easy to use and the viewer could easily find the type of story they wanted to read but they also thought that there was to enough variety of newspaper stories.

Overall what I have found from the evaluation is that I should add more content into my work and have a better design layout to make the audience pay more attention to the content that is presented, I should also make the work more presentable and clear for the audience as some of the work like the newspaper was more messier in layout and design that the other work such as the website.

Final Newspaper Name

Final Newspaper Name

The final name I have chosen for my newspaper article is Hedingham echo, the name as as the name refers and relates to the area of which the newspaper is published and created from. I have chosen this name cause it reflects the newspaper and what it is about the most, the name is easily recognised and easy to remember so audiences know what newspaper it is and the name tells when it will be published. The title will be seen on the masthead of the newspaper that will also go on the newspaper website on the home page and thought the site. The logo for the name of the newspaper has the bible Hedingham coat of arms representing the village, i chose that as part of the design as it makes it more physically appealing and also looks professional to the audience, the coat of arms was taken from a  picture and then set as black and white then set to a low opacity so the name can be seen. Other newspapers also have a coat if arms represented on their logo such as the Daily Mail, that is where i got the design idea from to add the coat of arms.

Feedback on Poster/Billboard

Feedback on Poster/Billboard

From publishing the poster/billboard for my newspaper I was able to gather some feedback from publishing the poster, there were mixed options from the audience such as negative and positive points. 

As some of the feedback was more negative here are what negative points and opinions from people had on the poster/billboardSome of the audience thought that the design was far to simple and basic and needed more added to it rather than a single headline in the centre with the newspaper logo at the top, it looked too bare for some people which did not make it stand out from other newspaper billboards and posters.

The rest of the audience thought that the simple basic design was easy to understand and easily caught their eye, comparing to other newspaper billboards it makes a clear point and gets the news across easily, the font style and the logo fits well together and makes it look more of a professional newspaper as a other fonts can make a newspaper look fake and unprofessional to the audience.

What can be improved?

from the feedback the poster/billboard could use more detail and added features such as 1 or two more newstories featured on the page, another logo could be added below the headline and the headline could have a different more eye catching title.

Website Feedback

Website Audience Feedback

I gathered some user reviews from the audience who used my website and complied their views and opinions, I had 4 people review my website and these are their thoughts on the website. 

An Audience member one thought that the site had a simple easy to layout to use and found it easy to go through the site without getting confused, while like other sites they have too many features and the viewer gets lots within all the content and they thought that there was a suitable amount of content but more could be added such as bigger new stories with more details.

The second remember of the audience thought that there was not enough information that they wanted from the site and more categories should be introduced into the site such as science and entertainment news, the design of the site could also be improved by adding more designs into it the site and maybe some more colour too to make it stand out.

The third audience member I received feedback from said that they thought that the home page and the other news article pages featured too much advertisement which took up most from the pages while they should feature news stories instead of advertisements, this took focus away from he stories and more onto the ads.

The fourth person I had feedback from said that the website has a unusual layout to other websites that they have used but as well it was easy to use, they thought the layout was too basic and need more added into it such as images and more on the top bar. as well they thought the share feature was a good feature on the website so other people an be shown and share their thoughts on the website.