The first two pages of a local newspaper, together with a poster for the newspaper and two hyperlinked pages from the newspaper's website.
I immediately decided I was going to create a student newspaper for my college - South East Essex College (SEEC) -
As we do not have one here and instead of having notice boards put up all around the college that the students do not pay attention to it seems a great idea to have it all in a college newspaper, which would cover local events and college related topics. Once I had established my audience I thought I needed a 'twist' to the newspaper, something that would make it more interesting to students and not just another 'dull' newspaper that doesn't relate to them. I came up with an idea to create a parody newspaper, one that would be humourous to students, a light hearted paper full of 'banter'. I then researched parody newspapers and to my disbelief I was only able to find one, in America, which was only, based online - the Onion - due to the lack of this genre of newspaper it gave me more motivation and inspiration to create my own. I felt this was going to be hard work but was pleased to be challenging all typical conventions of real existing newspapers of today.
Once I had planned what I intended to do I had a lot of research to gather. I started by collecting local newspapers to analyse, this enabled me to spot key conventions and layout designs. Furthering this I collected national and international newspapers too so I could compare them to the local newspapers. This is all shown in my 'Researching Local Newspaper' post.
Doing this brief enabled me to develop my skills in many programs that are commonly used in the media industry today such as InDesign.
I used InDesign to create my newspaper, it helped me create the layout as you can insert guidelines and specify all the measurements. Additionally when I set up the blank document I made sure the bleed, slug and columns were visible, this made me aware of my border and helped me design my newspaper neatly, professionally and in proportion. I used a stroke tool in InDesign to give my pictures borders and to have a neat coloured line at the top of the page - both of these features are present in real media products which I learnt from my research of existing products. I decided to follow conventions of layout for my newspaper so the students understand what it is and what the main purpose is - which is to provide them with news and information. I have used columns in my newspaper with big bold headings and subheadings and I have included original pictures with captions and a logo, the main reason I have done this is to make sure my product still has a newspaper 'feel' to it. InDesign enabled me to do this effortlessly.
Another program I have become familiar with through this course is Dreamweaver
I used Dreamweaver to design my newspaper's website, I firstly had to create a basic template with the help from the table creating tool, once I had finalised a layout, with the use of hyperlinks in a navigation bar and designed all the colours I used Photoshop - which is the third program I have used to complete the brief -to design the body of the website and the animated image that I used as the heading of website.
The use of the animated image - which you will see in action if you access the website - challenges the conventions of a newspaper website as they rarely use animated images unless they are the advertisements. I have challenged this as I think it gives the website a bit more 'life' and make it more interesting, especially because of the young target audience this animation makes the website portray a more modern feel which I believe is necessary when the target audience are students.
I used Photoshop the most during my project, it helped me perfect my photography and images for use and enabled me to create a professional looking logo for my whole project which I then was able to incorporate into each task, the poster, the website and the newspaper. Furthermore I designed my poster in Photoshop, this gave me a lot of freedom when designing as there are countless tools and programs within Photoshop that enables me to control everything down to a tee, moreover the use of layers in the program are extremely helpful and the ease of locking them all so you can't make any mistakes is ideal. I had a lot of trouble at first with the poster as when I tried to research newspaper posters I was unable to find anything. This lead me to settle for the sandwich boards posters that are displayed outside of off licenses for my inspiration and guide for designing my own, so I researched those and managed to find lots of images.
My poster definitely follows the conventions of a sandwich board poster, the minimal colour (I only used black, white and red) the capitalization for the heading and the font is also very similar in most of my researched posters. My poster has been purposefully designed and follows poster conventions so passers by and students can skim the poster, taking in all the information they need. The font is very large so it catches their eye and they notice, and are able to read, it from a distance.
Where I have challenged conventions in my newspaper is within the images and the text. Some pictures I have included in my newspaper have been wholly created for humour purposes, such as the image of the SpEEC.com couple. This image was created using Photobooth on a MACbook which cleverly distorts the model's face - I have taken a picture which looks like two faces are stuck to each other and then used this to desribe how the couple are 'inseparable'
Additionally all the text within the newspaper has been written with a light hearted and conversational tone, which have all been written on the blog. This has been done as it is a key feature to making a parody newspaper!
The creation of the website to support the newspaper is a very effective concept, due to my young student target audience the website is ideal, everything that is electronic appeals to them and is a much quicker way of reaching information using a platform they are very comfortable with - the internet. Additionally all the newspaper I researched for this task had websites supporting them. The website will also create more coverage for the newspaper as it would be available all over the word on the internet - whereas the newspaper would only be distributed locally. The creation of the website is an extremely effective tool for SpEEC as it enables it to move with the development of new media, everything is becoming electronic and the death of print media is upon us. Additionally another good use for the newspapers website would be the interaction the audience could have with the news, expressing opinions with comments.
The website is in complete contrast to the poster I also produced, I believe the poster has little effect compared to the website. The poster only has one purpose, which is to advertise the launch of my new college newspaper and informing the students of where you can get one. Furthermore I had a lot of trouble finding newspaper posters as I aforementioned which suggests there isn't many that exist, this could be because of the lack of effectiveness it has on the newspaper itself. Also thinking back, I can not think of one single time where I have seen a newspaper poster which just proves its lack of effectiveness.
Throughout the development of my newspaper, audience feedback has been a very important focus point when I have been making decisions. The first major change due to my peers informal feedback was the change of my newspaper title from SnEEC to SpEEC
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I believe this makes a huge change to the newspaper as the use of punning with the title of the college (SEEC) is very successful in both versions, however the use of the 'p' to create 'speak' has much more relevance to a newspaper than 'sneak'. This change is down to my peers giving me feedback on my choice of title, which then allowed them to advise me. Furthermore the feedback I received from my tutor and peers on my first logo design was not all good, they said it didn't look strong enough for a logo and was quite boring - which I didn't realise until I created my new logo.
Moreover their constant feedback when I showed them my sketches of all my designs, logo wise, layout wise etc. helped me make decisions to what would look best and also through their feedback I was able to see what would appeal to my target audience as I was getting them actively involved in the creation of my newspaper that would eventually be in their hands.
Throughout this project I have learnt so many new things, gaining and developing a lot of skills that will stay with me, I am please I got the opportunity to use software packages that are actually used in the industry today. I am very happy with the overall outcome of all three of my tasks and can now hopefully pursue a media education at university and further!
