Website Research: The Sun

Overall this website looks more professional with a clean layout compared to the others, it also uses colours associated with the town it is based in. It displays the main stories well and uses adverts in a way that doesn’t distract you from the articles. We really liked the use of a shadow and a different colour background The Sun uses. It separates the main page from the background really well making it stand out. Also it makes the website seem more in depth and not just flat and boring.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/

Website Research: The Echo

The layout of the echo website looks very similar to the website of Wigan to today. Adverts on the right and above the articles. However the echo has a main story thats shows a bigger picture with a bit of text to the left, whereas Wigan today didn’t have an obvious one. The Echo looks very basic and it is the simplest out of the four other websites. Its background colour is the same throughout the page making it look flat and boring. Furthermore, it looks unorganized and clustered, as if not much thought went into designing it.

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/

Website Research: The Mail on Sunday

The mail on Sunday has no adverts on its main page at the top whereas the three other web pages do. It concentrates more on the stories and there are no flashing pictures to distract you from the articles. There are adverts further down the page but very limited ones. The Mail on Sunday is a bit more complicated then Wigantoday. It uses three columns, the on the left and middle used for main story headlines and the right column for smaller stories, specifically for females. However, with this layout it looks messy and unorganized as there are articles all over the place which makes it confusing for the reader where to look first.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/mailonsunday/index.html

Website Research: Wigan Today

When you first look at the website for Wigan today there is no obvious main article. The news stories that are posted are just in a single column, listed downwards. They also use a lot of big adverts that take up half the page which can be very distracting if you just want to read the news. The adverts are displayed on the right hand side of the page and along the top. This leaves the articles a small space, compared to the adverts, to be read. Wigan today use a gradient effect for the background which separates the page from the background and makes the information on the website stand out more compared to the daily mail and echo news.

http://www.wigantoday.net/

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.