How choices made relate to target audience

Front Cover:


- For the front cover it was a combination of the articles chosen and the related images (local figures such as the recycling manager and local schools such as HGS). The new building information will be interesting to both students and parents alike, so it appeals to two parts of my demographic. This is the same for my 2nd page.

Website:


- For the website, it appeals to the target audience in a similar way to the paper but also appeals to a wider audience. This audience will be more ‘computer-savvy’, although the site is simple enough to use for those who aren’t. Again images and articles appeal to the locality of my target audience.

Poster:


- For my poster I felt I should include some images as while The Sun’s poster is good at aiming at its target audience by listing the features and styles in the paper – it fails to relate to them by giving no examples through imagery. Similarly with The Guardian’s, most of their posters aren’t even for the newspaper in general but for specific features (here it is a WW2 article). I attempted to relate to the target audience by following the stereotypes; the mother is more interested in local events (such as school walks, shops opening etc), the children are more interested in the comics located in the back, the father focuses mainly on the sport, and the young man in the shirt and tie goes for the business section. By doing so and using a family atmosphere it attracts my target audience.

Audience feedback on final products

Front cover:


Second page:


Poster:


Audience feedback on the final products were very good, all commenting saying how the front cover and 2nd page were successful in mimicking a real newspaper. Remarks made to the images and the actual text were also positive. The only negative was that the poster ‘doesn’t look like a real newspaper’s advert/poster’. I attempted to address this by adding information about the paper at the bottom – but the design was intentional; to not follow the norms and conventions of a newspaper poster. I felt with the front cover, second page and website I had followed the theme well, so I should do something slightly different from the norm with the poster but nothing radical.


Website:


Although there was no initial audience feedback on my website (instead I modelled it on another), mid-production feedback again helped me to add in features, widgets and more to make it feel like a real newspaper website. Feedback on the completed product commented on how the layout, articles and widgets all made it look professional. One negative feedback was that it was too bare – I have tried to address this as much I can.

Newspaper poster research

To create an advertisement poster for my own newspaper, I have researched the generic conventions of these national newspaper posters. The two newspapers I chose as examples are The Guardian and The Sun.



This advert is for a 7 part series on World War II for The Guardian and The Observer. The design itself is quite minimalistic, stylish, and catches the eye - which is what my own poster will adhere to. The contrasting colours of red/blue and black/white also help the overall effect.



This poster works very well as it literally lists all the features in the paper. To someone who knows nothing about The Sun, they can easily deduct what it's about just from the poster.

My final poster after research and production:

Website construction

The severe limitations of sites.google (mainly because it is free) do not allow me to fully design my newspapers websites which I envisioned - nevertheless the layout does resemble a real paper website domain, plus the articles and pictures follow the norms and conventions of the newspapers and sites I researched.

Here is a selection of images which show the construction process and image creation I did while making the website for my newspaper.



Further in construction:

Website Articles

Here are two articles I have created which shall be uploaded to the website.

Cook joins Town

Joining the club on a permanent basis from Blue Square Bet Premier club Gateshead is 22 year old Mark Cook. Mark was at Hartlepool United last season, and prior to that came up through the ranks at Newcastle United. Gateshead manager Ian Bogie commented saying: "We do not need to run with three goalkeepers but I thank him for his efforts during his time at Gateshead and wish him well at Harrogate."

In news also relating to Harrogate Town, the team will now travel to Hyde on Saturday 6 November for a fixture (KO 3pm). Both clubs were without a fixture on this date as result of their originally scheduled opponents still being involved in the FA Cup. Having exhausted other options to re-arrange a game for Saturday 6 November, Harrogate Town has agreed with Hyde to bring forward the match that was due to be played in March. The change leaves Harrogate Town with only two games in March, but leaves free dates for re-arrangements should there be weather postponements in the upcoming winter season.
A new date for the home match against Corby Town has not been confirmed as of yet.

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Harrogate nightclub closes its doors

One of Harrogate's top nightspots has unexpectedly ceased trading. The Blue Monkey nightclub on Station Parade – formerly Carringtons – shut its doors last weekend, cancelling its entire catalogue of events for the autumn and winter.
A spokesman said the reason the club had closed was because it was "not cost-effective at the moment" to continue, but said that the owner hopes to re-open when conditions are more favourable.

Organiser Dorothy Barichard said: "I'd arranged one night with the manager, who kindly agreed to provide the venue free of charge. I didn't hear anything for a while, so I called to make sure everything was OK. I was told he'd left and that they weren't aware they were hosting our event.
"They said the club was closing because they couldn't pay the bills. I didn't get the impression they were opening again; it sounded like that was the end of it."
The property was previously owned by Carringtons, which had been a fixture of the Harrogate night-scene since 1975. The Blue Monkey launched in March to provide a fresh take but has ultimately been unsuccessful.

Generic conventions of two newspaper websites (home page) + semiotic analysis

Harrogate Advertiser (click to enlarge):



Firstly, the Harrogate Advertiser banner is located near the top of the screen. This is the same banner as used in the newspaper, showing consistency. Above this is an animated advert plus register/sign in buttons for visitors and members.

Below the banner there are eight hyperlinks to different areas of the website which enables easy access and movement around the website. To the right of this there is a search bar, which enables you to search through the site or on the web. Below this there are two main Harrogate news stories, one sport story and a magazine review.

A large portion of the home page is covered in advertisement, one of the main conventions you will always see on a newspaper website (seen on all sites I have researched) is adverts. This is an example of synergy; mutual benefit for all. The advertisers gain more views and the site receives money for ‘renting’ out an advertising space.

To the right of the large section of adverts, there is another section primarily for this week’s top /popular stories.
Another generic convention the website uses is the date just below the banner, which is also what the newspaper does.

In terms of font - apart from the Harrogate Advertiser banner, all the text on screen is Arial (a common font style for websites)varying in size; size 12 for article titles, and 9 for everything else. On the contrary, the actual newspaper uses the traditional Times New Roman,also a common font style for newspapers.

At the time the screenshot was taken, only one picture included a person - this is strange as usually newspapers like to have pictures of people to make it more interesting. This isn't a big problem here however, as a picture of fireworks is just as interesting to the target audience.

Looking at cohesion of colours, it is clear that the colour theme is predominately blue with a few yellow/orange combinations in pictures/when you highlight a hyperlink.

For news values, there is an example of the threshold/amplitude value (the size of an event will govern the amount of attention it is given) which is the bonfire night article. While the size of this event if relatively small in the sense of the nation, it is quite a big local community activity.

York Press (click to enlarge):



The layout is quite similar to the Harrogate Advertiser, but compared to other newspaper websites I have researched (Nidderdale Herald, Yorkshire Evening Post) it is the most different as the other sites are all produced by the same web designer; therefore having a near identical layout to one another.

As with the others there is the main banner, an animated advertisement , a search bar, and the register/sign in buttons. Below this are hyperlinks to main categories such as Sport, Leisure, etc for ease of use around the site. The date is above the banner instead of below as it was on the Harrogate Advertiser website.

The rest of the website is slightly different however. The latest headlines are all located to the left of the screen, while the middle section includes a ‘most read/most comments’ area, photos, and also a ‘buy & sell’ feature. To the right of this there are few advertisements and local information. These adverts, as said above for the Harrogate Advertiser website, are an example of synergy.

Looking at the typeface, a large variety is used -

Headlines

By looking at the resuslts of the questionnaire, we can see that 'Harrogate Post' was the most popular choice of name. After I had decided on the classical Times New Roman font - I tried a couple different colour schemes before finally landing on light blue.



I decided against a green colour scheme as it would give the wrong impression, as most papers/leaflets which solely focus on recycling and the environment use green as their main colour.



I decided against red also because it is more common for tabloids to have this colour scheme - this is where the term 'red tops' come from (see: The Sun, Daily Star etc).