Our Newspaper Adverts

For our newspaper, we created three advertisements that would appear on the front page and the second page of The Wigan Word. We decided to create one advert advertising windows and doors, one offering financial help and the otehr a solicitors, as these are types of adverts that appear quite frequently in local newspapers.

The advert above conveys the word 'Free' in a large, bold and easy to read font that is intended to attract a potential audience. Despite the colour scheme being toned down and bright vivid colour being avoided due to the company being a solicitors, the advert is still attractive and I believe it would still draw in potential customers for the company. The phone number and e-mail address are the only two coloured text in the advert which would make it easier for the customer when trying to contact the company.

The advert above uses a very bright colour scheme in an attempt to grab the readers' attention. The dark shade of yellow is often associated with gold and suggests to the reader that the company can make them wealthy. Black text on a yellow background is easy to read and using the font 'Impact' this makes the advert very clear. Finally, the phone number is the largest text on the advert whihc would mean there is no way the reader wouldn't be able to contact the company.

Finally, the third advert we created (above) is the largest and took the most effort to make. It is advertising windows and doors that can be bought from the company 'Wigan Windows'. We walked around college taking pictures of various windows and door frames for the advert. Some of the pictures are below.

The advert has a colour scheme of red, blue and white. From our research we found that most adverts with pictures gave them prominence by placing them in the centre of the advert, so we did this with ours. The very bright colours are eye-catching large bold foints are used. Together, the advert meets all the conventions of an average local newspaper advert.

Advertisement Research

Before we created our own advertisements that would appear in the newspaper, we decided to research existing newspapers adverts in order to assist our decision making in terms of colour, font, images and layout.

After analysising the advertisements above, we came to the conclusion that the majority of newspaper advertisements keep to one colour scheme (purples, blues and oranges in the cases above)and the company name is in a large font at the top of the advert. In most cases a picture has prominence in the middle of the advert in an attempt to draw the customer's attention.

From this research we will make sure that our adverts meet the conventions of the average newspaper advert by ensuring we use bold colourful text and give any pictures we use prominence by placing them in the centre of the advertisement.

Possible Newspaper Stories

Above is a spider diagram showing story ideas, some of which we will possibly use in the final newspaper design, and for the two hyperlinked pages.

Potential Headers / Logos

After researching existing newspaper headers and logos we decided to create a few variations of what our final design could look like using Adobe Photoshop. We will then decide which header we prefer and will put it on the newspaper, hyperlinked pages and possibly the poster.

After much deliberation, we came to the conclusion that the header (left) looks the most authentic and would be best suited to a local newspaper. We will therefore proceed in using it on our finished products.

Existing Newspaper Headers and Logos

Once we had decided what our newspaper was going to be called we had to design the logo for it which would appear both on the newspaper, the hyperlinked pages and possibly the poster. However before we began to design it we researched other existing headers and logos so when it came to creating our own, it would look as professional and realistic as the ones that are featured in actual newspapers.

From looking at the headers above we found that in almost all cases, the colour red was used despite the newspapers being local and not fitting into the same "red top" newspaper category as the liks of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mirror". We noticed that the colour scheme is not the only regular feature that occurs, when analysing these headers. The majority of them use bold, eye-catching text too. After taking these conventions into account, we will make sure our newspaper header conforms to these so it will look as realistic as possible.

Possible Newspaper Names

Below is a spider diagram of the possible names that we considered when trying to come up with a name for our newspaper.

After considering all of our newspaper name ideas, we decided that our top three favourites were: "The Wigan Word", "The Wigan Mirror" and "The Lancashire Lowdown". We believed that these were the best three ideas as they contained alliteration and assonance, which if we were creating a real newspaper would be easily remembered by customers. However, we eventually came to the conclusion that “The Wigan Word” was the best idea after consulting our survey results of people who claim that they regularly buy newspapers. The results of our survey is shown in the table below.

Introduction

For our A2 Media project we have chosen the brief of making a local newspaper, a poster advertising it and 2 hyperlinked pages from the newspaper’s website. We will now go on to research existing newspapers, advertising and websites before we create our own to make our final products as realistic as possible.