Masthead Research

Masthead Research

Ideas for Masthead:

Here are some examples of existing mastheads from other newspapers in including The Times, The Independent and the Daily Mail.

I will come up with multiple ideas for what I could use for my newspaper, with help from existing newspaper mastheads I can take inspiration from them such as the design and font style and incorporate that into my designs. An idea I had was a design with a crest like what is seen in the Daily Mail and The Independent, these crest's are used to show where or symbolise where the newspaper is based on its location such as London and this also makes it look unique and also easily recognised to viewers.Some ideas will be variations of one idea with slight changes like the size of the font and font style, each masthead has similarities that they all possess, the design is very simple and most mastheads use a more elegant type font such as what the Daily Mail uses, The Independent uses a similar type font but its not as bold. For my masthead I want it have the same elegant type style font none bold, a crest to represent the location as well which only a few existing newspaper mastheads use. 

Newspaper Name Ideas

Name of Newspaper

Newspaper Name Ideas:

Here are some ideas that I could names my newspaper article, the name must relate to the area so the name of the location must be present and what sort of newspaper article it is such as if it is published every day, weekly etc. These are what I had to consider when I make my newspaper name, every name with the town name the newspaper will be made and published in.

Hedingham Gazette, Hedingham Times, Sible Hedingham News, The Hedingham Guardian, Hedingnham Chronicle. Hedingham Echo, Hedingham Daily.

The three names I have considered for the newspaper is Hedignham Times, Hedingham echo and Hedingham Gazette. These seem the better option for the name of the newsapaper and the final one will be featured on the newspaper website, billboard and mastheads.

Newspaper Name:

The final name I have chosen for my newspaper article is Hedingham echo, 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. I will be doing some mock up ideas of the title and masthead for the newspaper that will also go on the newspaper website on the home page.

Newspaper Audience Research

Newspaper Research

Audience Research

The type of audience I plan to target my newspaper at would be for mainly to adults,young adults and both male and female audience, the content for the newspaper would be more suited to this target audience as it would consist of entertainment news articles and some serious crime news too to balance out the content. content that interested the readers most will provide the most income from the newspaper with the popular new stories help to sell the newspaper and get more recognized, media and entertainment being one of the most popular topics would be the best choice to use for the newspaper for the audience as to gathers the most attention. By using audience research it will help shape the newspaper and to help pick out relevant stories that is suited for my target audience ,as well as to show what the audience wants to see and get a better understanding of what the audiences wants. Using irrelevant stories that are not targeted at my target audience will not be needed and will be a waste of information for the newspaper and that would make the reader interested. 

This is a example of a popular newspaper section from the Daily Mail website called Fe-mail, this is directly targeted to women as suggested in the category name making use of word play with Fe from Female and mail from email. This section has a lot of celebrity news stories and other smaller articles that relate to celebrity and even entertainment news This category of news has been proven to be popular to the public so it will have a lot more content and the newspaper has even bothered to put in in, audience research has shown the writers and producers of the newspaper to provide this for the audience as it proved to be very popular among the public.

 By using polls and reviewing which of the news article categories is the most popular the newspaper can provide the right articles that will catch their audience or a specific targeted audience group such as females for this, online newspapers are able to check on the amount of female and male viewers on their site allowing them to make specific categories or news stories for that gender if they seem more interested in the other.

Masthead Audience Research

Masthead Audience Research

Audience Research:

For my audience research into my masthead I researched what the audience would like the design of the masthead to look like and add their ideas to what I could do, the styling of the masthead has to suite the newspaper and the type that it is. An old style font and design is more aimed at the older audience and makes the newspaper look more professional and serious but old too, while a more modern take to the masthead will attract the younger audiences as it will look up to date and modern, the colour scheme has to keep to a minimal with max of 3 colours. The target audience for this masthead is universal and to one specific gender, the age group is more aimed at adults but younger audiences as well.

Website Comparisons

Website Comparisons

I am going to compare the 4 newspaper websites to talk about what they share in similarities and what makes them different from each other, all the websites have different layouts and designs as well as content that is featured.

Sky News & Daily Mirror

I am comparing these two newspaper websites sky news and the Daily Mail (Mirror Online), these two compared to each other have some differences and a few similarities. The Mirror on-line layout has more detail on the homepage while Sky news has a very clean simple layout design, the top bars both share similar content and tabs such as the story categories which are all in the same order while the mirror online top bar has more going on. Sky news has a grey, red and blue colour scheme while the mirror online has black, red and white and red is more eye catching giving it the advantage for the reader to spot the headlines highlighted in red.

On the homepage the mirror online has a feature bar full of featured top stories while the Sky news doe not, this makes the more popular stories to be read more and be more noticed by the reader. The website designs layout are both totally different as sky news is more simple and has less stories on show making it easy to scroll through the site without being distracted by the multiple stories on the page, the mirror online has a lot more on display which makes it hard for the reader to choose a story and this impress the reader to easily go through the site.The Mirrors page is a bit longer than the Sky news as it has more stories condensed into the page, featured and most read articles are featured both top and bottom of the page to make them more easily spotted by the reader. The two sites also do not share the exact same articles and his gives them more diversity in their content, the articles are featured from around the world including news stories that are not typically featured.

Sky news focus's mainly on world news such as crimes and politics in the UK and the US, the audience for this newspaper website would mainly be older audiences from adults to elder's, the audience is different to the Daily Mirror mainly because the daily Mail has more entertainment for content thus bringing in the younger audiences such as teens and young adults. Sky news also has a TV channel which in turn gives it a better wider audience as Sky news is watched worldwide by a variety of different age groups, but it is still not as popular as the Daily Mirror as its likely viewers would prefer to watch the newspapers TV channel instead of reading it online.

Website Research

Research

I have done researched into existing online newspaper websites and analysed the details as well of design into the newspaper website, the main websites I did Research on was The Daily Mail, Sky News, Daily Mirror and The Guardian. These newspapers are all very popular and well know by the public, these sites are used regularly everyday by millions of people worldwide giving it a wide very wide audience.
These sites all have different amount of content regarding newspaper stories, some of the sites will have only a few big news stories on the home page while others have huge amounts to choose from.

The Daily Mirror

The first newspaper website I researched was The Daily Mirror or Mirror online, this newspaper has relatively simple layout with most of what you see on the home page being mainly dominated by different newspaper stories, the top bar has a range of topics from big news stories to the strange giving the audience more variety of stories to choose from and even some that they may not find in the newspaper. The colour scheme used is very simple only being black, white and red, the red helps draw attention popping out to the reader, main big stories will be likely highlighted to gain the readers attention.

Sky News

Sky news was the next website I did research into, this website has a more simpler layout design that to the other newspaper websites. The top banner has a few tabs leading to the other news stories and a additional search bar which can be helpful tot the reader if they want to find a specific article, the stories are more organised on the page with a bit more less than the other websites this makes it easier to navigate through to find the story the reader wants. On the right hand side there is a video bar with news stories that contain video clips which organises the stories with video away from the none video stories, which is alas another helpful doting feature to the site.  The home page does not feature as much stories as the other newspaper websites, it has about 3 categories with UK, politics and entertainment with the top red stories at the bottom. 

The Daily Mail

The Daily Mail was the third newspaper website I researched into and this one was the most popular UK newspaper out of all of them. The site had a lot more content such as lots of articles which dominated the home page, the amount of articles made it very hard to pick and choose a story and with the amount on offer it took too long to find the right one. The layout was all round messy and very unorganised, as well as the design for the colour scheme was simple which included blue, white and black font. As most of the newspaper stick to only 3 colours to keep it simple and not too extravagant and distracting to the reader. As the paper is the most popular it would of course have more news stories on the page to keep on top above the other newspapers, even having stories that are less known and not as big as the other big headlines for lighter reads.
It has a lot of entertainment news too which is one of the most popular stories people like to read, like the other websites the weather and strange news is put at the end of the top bar as they are not as popular with the readers.

The Guardian

The Guardian was the last newspaper website I researched and is one of the most popular UK newspaper's, first look into the newspaper it is a lot more different than the other online newspaper websites. The home page layout is more professional and clean with a good amount of stories and text, as well as the design layout is very simple with a  colour scheme of blue and white which unlike the other newspapers it has 2 colours for its design.  It has multiple sections for different article genres, like strange news, highlights, weather, technology etc and a simple top bar with the sections linking to the pages. Like the other sites it has a helpful search bar to find specific articles which may not feature on the home page at first look, also the most popular types of stories such as UK, politics and technology are one of the first categories top feature on the top bar meaning they are more popular to the readers

Questionaire

Questionnaire

Survey/Questionnaire:

Here are some questions that some of the public will be asked by me to help put together my newspaper article, these answers will be incorporated into the final newspaper.

Which name do you prefer for the newspaper?

.........................................................................

What sort of content do you want it to have?
......................................................................

Which audience should the newspaper be aimed at?

......................................................................

What events could we include in the newspaper?
......................................................................

Should we have stories that are from surrounding areas?
......................................................................

Should the newspaper have ads and promotions?

......................................................................

Findings of Research:

From the results of my questionnaire and research I have found that the public would like multiple stories based off other surrounding areas instead of having stories from one specific area, the main audience will be mainly adults to elders as they are the most likely to buy the newspaper but with a few of the younger audiences appealing to the newspaper.
The news article and online article should not have a lot of promotions and too many ads like existing newspapers, as more stories could use the space on the article. The stories that should be included should be documented form the main location and surrounding areas and about different topics, such as local events, crime news, health and technology etc. t