Question 1: In what ways does your media product

use/develop or challenge forms and conventions?

Layout

Before starting my main task that was creating a

newspaper, I researched similar newspapers such

as, The Bromley Times and The Metro, which are

both free newspapers. I identified the conventions

that were used by both of these newspapers, to

give me an idea of how I could maybe challenge

some of the usual conventions but also follow

some to ensure my newspaper looked professional.

I established most newspapers but not all use a

simple five-column layout, I followed this

convention as it is a simple but an effective layout

when you have both text and images on your page,

as my newspaper is aimed at a younger audience I

attempted to avoid having long articles as I feel my

audience would be more likely to read shorter and

more interesting articles.

Measurement

To ensure my newspaper looked professional, I

took a number of measurements from The Metro

such as the measurements for; Gutter space,

column width, the length and width of the

masthead after doing this I entered the relevant

measurements into a programme on the Apple Mac

called Indesign where I designed my paper this

ensured all the measurements were correct such

as, the alignments of columns, advertisements and

masthead all fit effectively looking neat and clear.

As my measurements were taking from another

paper, I knew this would ensure my newspaper

looked professional.

Design

My images and adverts were also created with the

measurements I took from The Metro newspaper

this gave me the start I needed to make sure my

newspaper would look professional and sharp. I

understand how important it is to make sure

particular things are done in certain ways such as,

the use of fonts and colours because this would

help the audience identify a newspaper from a

magazine. I designed things in certain ways such

as, my masthead I wanted to create a logo which

suited my target audience so the colour pink for

the font. My newspaper is called ‘i-sport

Chislehurst’ for the font of ‘i-sport’ I used a

handwritten style and for the ‘Chislehurst’ I used a

more bold and simple font. I did this to represent

both youth and also, there parents as my

newspaper could possibly appeal to the parents of

the youths this also, shows the difference between

the two cultures and age groups. The font I used

for my front page was fairly simple and wasn’t very

eye catching however, the colour I used was a

bright pink this was to represent vibrant youth and

I also felt I needed a bright colour to catch my

audiences eye. Using this colour challenged the

stereotype that my newspaper would be aimed at

girls as pink is supposedly a typically female

orientated colour. Although, my newspaper is

aimed at both males and females it is

predominantly aimed at males as some of the

articles I produced may not appeal to a female

audience.

I feel I have challenged many conventions of a

typical local newspaper because all my stories are

sport centered which is unknown to do so by a

local newspaper as they usually have a minimal

sports section at the back and a sports story will

only make the front page if a team has won a

national trophy with the main stories being about

local important news. I also challenged the

conventions by targeting my paper at a younger

audience. Most local newspapers I researched in

targeted there paper at an older audiences, such

as parents aged 35 years and above. This meant

many components of my paper were different to

others, such as colours ad my use of photography.

Question 2: How effective is the combination of my

main product and the other ancillary tasks?

Firstly, My newspaper, radio advertisements and

poster were all created to appeal to younger

audiences who have a strong interest in sport.

Before constructing each text I had to research and

identify how I could interest my audience. I feel I

could have reflected my knowledge more

effectively through my work, the language I used

within my newspaper could have been more

persuasive and informal. However, I feel my poster

was an effective poster although it was a fairly

simple design I feel it was successful, as it was an

original idea.

Poster

When researching posters I realised I didn’t want to

follow the average conventions by having a large

picture of my newspaper, I wanted to design a

unique poster therefore, I used grass as my

background to represent a sports field and also,

the colour of the font in white to represent

markings on a sports pitch. However, when starting

out designing my poster I felt the need to follow

these simple conventions, as I didn’t have many

other ideas, but as the task went on my ideas

developed. As this was an original idea with some

eye catching detail I feel my target audience would

be drawn into reading the poster then going on to

picking up a copy of it. I used fairly vibrant colours,

which stand out to catch the eye of my audience

as my poster is design to be on billboards and on

the side of buses rather than in magazines. I feel

by poster was lacking detail, although it was

targeted to my audience through the connotations

of sport the poster is very male dominated

whereas, my poster is not only aimed at males. I

also feel my poster had the required amount of

flair to be amount to appeal to my specific

audience.

Radio Advert

I started my research and planning of a radio

advert by visiting rab.com and listening to the best

radio adverts of all time, this gave me many ideas

of what worked well in radio advertisement. I learnt

from this research that the best adverts were fairly

simple ideas but had a sense of comic to them, this

helped to build a relationship with their audience

and once a relationship is built with the audience

they would take much more interest in the advert

which often meant they would take away a lot

more from it and were more likely to consider

taking interest in the product that is being

advertised. Although, I had discovered all of this

information on radio advertisements, I feel my

radio advert could have gone better although the

advert I produced I felt was original and linked to

my target audiences interests it could have been a

lot more persuasive to engage my audience.

Newspaper

The newspaper task was the most time consuming

out of the three tasks but I felt this showed with

the final product. Although, I feel my newspaper

went well and did certain things well like engage

and specific target audience through my own

photography. However, there was a lot that I could

have done to improve my newspaper if there was

more time provided such as, my stories could have

been developed further I feel there is not enough

detail within the stories to draw the audience in

and allow them to feel emotive. There is still a fair

bit of blank space on the second page but I feel on

the front page I made good use of the space

provided by filling it with plugs and adverts.

In conclusion, I feel all three of my tasks linked

fairly well and supported the newspaper, which

was the main task. However, all of the task could

be improved with more time available but I feel I

have defined my target audience fairly well

throughout. I could have engaged my audience

better through the radio advert, by using more

persuasive language.

Question 3: What have you learnt from your

audience feedback?

Firstly for my feedback, I ask the other students

within my class to comment and give me the

feedback on the draft for my main product, the

newspaper. This involved people giving me both

positive and negative points of the product and

also offering an insight into what they thought

could be improved to make it a better product.

The next feedback exercise was for the whole

media department, we printed out all of the

newspapers and were giving post-it notes where

we could write our comments, both negative and

positive and stick it to each other’s products. This

was very useful, as it provided many different

ideas on how to develop my paper further. Many

positive points were brought up such as, the

quality of my images and the quality of my advert

on the front page. Also, the feedback given

provided some basic conventions that I had missed

out such as, page numbers. When comparing my

product to the other existing products within the

group I realised how I could make my newspaper

look more professional and less like a magazine by

having smaller font for the text, this would also fir

more with other conventional newspapers. The

main issues that were brought up about the second

page of my newspaper were that there was too

much blank space and also some of the alignments

of my photographs which were easily changed to

make the newspaper look more professional. This

feedback session provided valuable information

that helped me to develop the product and also,

add specific finishing touched that help with

making the product to excel with professionalism.

Some of my images were stretched and did not

look too appealing, after the feedback that I was

given I notice some of the faults such as the

stretched images, which I changed to make my

product more aesthetically appealing to my

audience. Although, this exercise was very useful

to me specifically it did have some faults within

this exercise, one being that because everybody

taking part in this feedback were young people not

everyone took it seriously therefore, I was left with

some useless comments such as ‘bold font’ this

didn’t help me to develop my paper. Also, it was

only aimed at the same audience so you are likely

to get the same sort of feedback whereas, if the

audience was more varied you would be left with

different types of feedback which could help to

develop my product it different ways. After, using

this feedback I was given after this session I

uploaded my paper onto a social networking site to

allow my peers to review it, this would also allow a

broader section of the audience to review it.

This next session provided me with more useful

feedback, containing a lot of positive feedback, this

shows me that my developments from the last

session have been useful and are leading my

product in the right direction. The front page

gained many positive comments, making me feel

confident in the changes I recently made from the

feedback I was given. I was given feedback about

the font size saying it looks too small on screen,

this could be due to the quality of the digital

version on the computer screen. However, the

printed version was easily readable and clear

which tells me making these alterations wouldn’t

improve my product as it is not an online paper

therefore if the quality is fine in the printed version

there is no need to change the font size. Slightly

more negative feedback was given to me about the

second page of my newspaper even though I did

make changes from the first feedback session I

was given. Some people commented saying the

design of my second page is too basic, but I felt

the need to follow the conventional design to add a

sense of professionalism to my newspaper.

However, I took the feedback into consideration

and decided to change where some of my adverts

were place to improve a consistent layout. I did not

receive any comments about the amount of blank

space was on the second page which is an

improvement because in the first feedback session

this was a major concern this means I have

developed my paper to make the improvements

needed. The feedback all in all was a success

although I couldn’t make vast changes because

many changes were made from the first feedback

session and many of the same people were

offering their advice and feedback, which meant

some of the feedback, was the same as before.

Question 4: How did you use new media

technologies in the construction and research,

planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the development of my entire project

new media has played a massive part. To access

existing examples of local newspapers to aid my

research I mainly used the internet based editions

of the publication as this made it a lot easier to

access the correct information, it also made it a lot

easier to present to information I found digitally.

This is a relatively modern form of viewing print

online, this means people all over the world can

access local news which means the news is a lot

more accessible to a wider audience. The Internet

when researching for my ancillary task played a

vital role.

Newspapers using websites to present there news

is a major part of new media, so when designing

my webpage I researched in a varied amount of

newspaper and magazine websites allowing me to

analyse conventions which I could possible use

within my website. Features such as, e-editions

and news updates available for mobile phones are

also at the forefront of new media, this influenced

me massively when creating my newspaper as it

influenced the name I chose ‘i-sport Chislehurst’

the ‘i’ represents the interactivity the newspaper

will contain and also having a qr barcode on my

front page which is a quick response barcode.

When displaying my work new media was again

very important, I used a blog document for my

planning and also to show the development of my

product. Blogs are a form of new media that have

increased in popularity in recent years with

websites such as; www.blogger.com and

www.twitter.com become quickly dominant when

looking to receive up to date news on anything

from worldwide news to celebrity gossip. I used the

features of a blog effectively meaning I could

upload work from anywhere which could be

accessed by my teacher and peers giving me more

freedom for time management. This meant I can

make changes to my work from the feedback I was

given by my teacher from anywhere with an

Internet connection. I also used, Slide Share and

Scribd to upload slideshows of documents I had

produced as this allowed images and texts to be

viewed in different way that were provided while

using the blog website. This meant word

documents can be uploaded and posted straight to

my blog with the same original layout, meaning it

would be a lot easier to understand.

New media also helped with the feedback side of

things as I uploaded images of my products onto a

social networking site which allowed people to

offer both positive and negative feedback allowing

me to make vast improvements to my products

which made a lot of difference. This form of new

media allow me to target a much broader audience

for feedback than was possible with paper print

outs of my work also, targeting different audience

which allowed me to receive various different types

feedback. I feel I used the new media available

effectively to make my products as best as they

could be. Without the new media I used the

planning, creation and development of the tasks

would have been a lot more difficult meaning the

final products would not have been as successful.

New media also influenced me to include new

features such as, plugs for the website, phone

updates and online editions.

By Jack Brennan