Monday, 18 October 2010

Photographs for Lambeth Press.

I am now working around the photographs that I originally took; I am currently planning which ones will suit my articles more and how I should edit the photos to make it look better and more professional. I will be using Adobe Photoshop as this is the most suitable program to use in editing pictures because users are able to do things in a more simple way such as; edit/remove the background of a picture, turn a coloured picture into a black and white, resize, edit the lighting and contrast, etc.

 

 What I was trying to do with this photo is I planned to write some of the headline on the side (wall) of the picture.  As you can there is loads of space on the side of the original photo, so I decided to crop the final one on both sides because I thought that writing the headline on the picture wasn't looking too good for my newspaper. 



 
 
 I will be using this photo on the sidebar of my newspaper page (car accident article). I didn’t edit it as much, apart from cropping the picture as you won’t be able to see the car properly because the image will be resized in a much smaller size.




 
I have no plans in editing this photograph because I think it already looks good as it is. I think the quality is excellent therefore I don’t need to edit the lighting and contrast of the picture. 



                   I decided to use this photo for my inside page (young entrepreneur article). I didn’t edit this picture because this is how exactly I wanted it for my newspaper.





 As far as this, those original photographs above are the ones that I will be using for both my front and inside page. However, there is still a chance that this might change because it will depend on how it looks on the page when it’s all done including the articles, as well as the advertisements.

Monday, 11 October 2010

Newspaper layout for Lambeth Press

I used internet and hard copy of local newspapers I then analysed the layout of it. I learned about the different type of newspaper layout conventions. Obviously, the nameplate/logo is always on the top of the page which should be bold, attractive and has got something to differentiate the product from its competitors. Dateline is used to show when the publication was written. The headline is always in bold and bigger font size than the rest of the texts. The lead headline usually starts with a bold letter to show the readers that it is the beginning of the paragraph/article. There is sometimes a subhead line for the article. In every article a by-line is used to show the name of the reporter who wrote the story. If there is a picture on the page there is always a caption to explain what the picture is showing and who’s in it; anchorage- which means that the caption ties down the meaning of the photograph(s). In some newspapers, they include a side bar on the front page to briefly show the other important articles, which then have a jump line to inform the readers of the page  where they can find the story.

I now have an adequate understanding of newspaper layout conventions. I am planning to follow some of this. However, I will challenge some forms and not follow some of the conventions for my local newspaper.  I used the program Adobe In Design to create my own unique layout that I will be using for my production.




These are the two unique layouts that I came out with. They are both similar in a way that they both have article columns at the bottom of the page and the lead headline looks just about in the same position for both layout.  The main differences are the positions of the lead article picture and the advertisements. I am planning to use either of this however, there is still a chance that the layout for my real project might change depending on the photographs that I will be using and the amount of articles I will be writing on the page.

Monday, 4 October 2010

Questionnaire and Results (from potential target audience)

This week I did a questionnaire to give out to the local area of Lambeth. The purpose of this is to find out which age group my target audience should be and which name would they prefer for  my newspaper. As well as how much they are willing to pay for a local newspaper. I am aware that I can create charts in different programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint however, I decided to use Microsoft Excel as this helped me more to analyse the information and visual data of my result. In general I just found it easier to use MS excel when it comes to analysing numerical results/data.

1.       Please tick your age group.

15-22 years old              _____

23-30 years old              _____

31-37 years old              _____     

38-45 years old               _____

45 years old and over    _____


2.       Which name would you prefer for a local newspaper?
Lambeth Times       _____
Lambeth Press        _____
Lambeth Daily         _____
Lambeth Gazette    _____

3.       How much should a local newspaper cost?
35p    ___
45p   ___
55p   ___
65p   ___

From my questionnaire I found out that ages 31 to 37 years old are my main  target readers as they are the ones that are most interested in reading a local newspaper. This is followed by 23-30 years old; I believe that this is also the 'working class' group and maybe mostly parents. The least interested are the teenagers I am aware that teens now a days are interested in technology, music and their social life, so maybe this are the main reasons why this age group shouldn't be my main target audience.

My local newspaper is going to be called 'Lambeth Press' as you can see from the questionnaire result there's more than half of the people that preferred the name. The least ones according to my results are ' Lambeth Times' and 'Lambeth Gazette' so I will definitely not be using those.



Nearly 60 percent of the people I asked chose 45p and I agree with them because I think this price is just enough; it's not too cheap yet not too expensive and it's still affordable. The least one with a 7 percent is '65p' and I totally understand why, especially now that we are just slowly coming out of recession.