1. Olivia Lyons
A2 Media Advanced Portfolio
C: Planning
Written summary of ideas generation
Written Summary of Ideas Generation
For my A2 Advanced Portfolio I will be producing a local newspaper. I hope to produce a
newspaper that clearly demonstrates my understanding of key aspects of genre and
narrative theory. In order to do this I have taken in to consideration these key aspects:
Genre and Conventions, Story Ideas, Tone, Design Principle, Editing and Image
Manipulation, Photography and Iconography.
Genre and Conventions
I am going to be creating a local newspaper, targeted at both males and females of a wide
age range. The genre of my newspaper is going to be a combination of both tabloid and
broadsheet also known as a berliner. I am going to use a simple, conventional newspaper
layout across both pages, including both text and images in order to attract the audience’s
attention and appeal to a wide scale target audience. In order to conform to conventions all
text will be in columns and I will use a serif font in order to keep consistency. However, for
my masthead I will use a sans-serif font as this is a convention seen in newspapers and
ensures the masthead stands out from the rest of the text. A bold masthead is iconic in
newspapers and in order to conform to this I will have the masthead appear at the top of
the page in the primary optical area. I will use a range of images in order to illustrate the
stories and to capture the audience’s attention. All the images I use will be original and
taken by me; however I may decide to manipulate the images using Photoshop in order to
enhance their overall appearance. The images I take will be realistic as I have found this is
conventional of local newspapers and they will each be relevant to the story.
Story Ideas
I am going to write four different article stories that will be featured in my newspaper.
Taking in to consideration the results from my market research task as well as conventions
of a newspaper I decided on the four different topics to base my story ideas around:
Crime related story- armed burglary at a local newsagents
Success story- local woman raised money for charity
Local history- community working to keep the local library open
Sport story- young boy signed for Manchester United youth team
I have chosen these four topics to base my stories on as I feel they conform to conventions
as well as appealing to the audience. Also Strauss’s theory of binary opposites can be
applied as the themes of both good and bad and portrayed within the newspaper. Each
story will be informative and to the point.

2. Olivia Lyons
A2 Media Advanced Portfolio
C: Planning
Written summary of ideas generation
Tone
I will use a formal tone throughout my newspaper as I will be designing it to be an
informative newspaper aimed at people who are interested in reading about their local
area, and not a tabloid that heavily focuses upon celebrity news. I will use a combination of
both text and images across both pages and each story will have an image to illustrate it. I
will design short, to the point headlines that use exaggerated language in order to attract
the audience’s attention and make them want to read the related story.
Design Principle
I will use a consistent house style and layout throughout the two pages of my newspaper in
order to keep consistency and enhance the overall appearance. When taking my images I
will take into consideration Guttenberg’s design principle of the rule of thirds in order to
achieve strong effective images. I will also apply this design principle to my newspaper
pages by having the masthead run across the top of the page in the primary optical area and
by having the advertisements in the weak fallow area.
Editing and Image Manipulation
I will use Photoshop to edit and manipulate the images I take in order to enhance their
overall appearance.
Photography
I am going to take a range of different pictures both portrait and landscape. I will take
pictures of both people and places in order to ensure there is a range of different images to
interest different readers and appeal to the whole target audience.
Iconography
I will design a masthead that is iconic of newspapers, using a sans-serif font that is large and
bold making it stand out from the rest of the text on the page. The sport related story will
feature a young boy that has just been signed to play for Manchester United’s youth team. I
will reference Manchester United in the headline for the story which is iconic of Manchester
and will be immediately recognised by a lot of people.
Taking all of this in to consideration I have now come up with the overall idea for my
newspaper in relation to each of the above areas. I will take all of this in to consideration
when designing my layout plans, story ideas and images.