2. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge codes conventions of real
media texts?
• Before I came up with my idea of masthead, I searched for various local and international newspapers.
Daily post, The News, Dawn, The Boston Blog, Local News were some of the newspapers which helped me
with the real conventions of masthead of it to be bold with large font so its easily visible. Below are some
newspapers masthead from which I took help :
3. • My product develops the conventions of these mastheads, drawing inspiration from the color schemes
and font types whilst adding a piece of my own creativity as well. The reason I stayed to typical newspaper
conventions is because newspapers tend to use very similar font types, and usually choose primary colors
such as black or red to draw the attention of the audience. To go against these conventions would make
my product look unprofessional and subsequently my target audience may not be effectively reached,
resulting in a loss of profit. So my masthead it rather simple, consisting of New Times Roman bold font in
black. But I had to give a recognization of the city as it’s the local magazine, as Lahore is well known for its
Badshahi Mosque so I added a grayscale picture in the background.
• For the rest of the front page I have followed the real media conventions, whether it’s the index or the
cover story. It also consists of two advertisements, one local and one of the famous fizzy drink brand;
Coca-cola. In my print I decided to add short articles in the bottom corner of both my front page and inside
page as well. This is a common feature in newspapers and was crucial in the flow of the newspaper,
without which there would be too many adverts in the lower portion of the page. These conformed to the
typical conventions of an article as it is not designed to draw too much attention away from the rest of the
page, therefore it would be counter-intuitive to deviate from these conventions. I used the typical bold
heading and also used the line 'Continues page 4' to let the reader know that there is a more in depth
article on the story later on in the newspaper.
• Here are the conventions of a local newspaper and my front page. This is arguably the most important part
of the newspaper as it is what the audience is actually buying the media for, so it has to look professional
and follow specific conventions otherwise it may not attract readers. Typically newspapers use either 3 or
5 columns of text in their stories. For my inside page I chose to use 6 columns. I followed the typical
conventions of a newspaper for my inside page and front page story and I believe the outcome looks
professional and will effectively attract my chosen target audience.
4.
5. Front Page
Masthead
Advertisement
Cover story
Image
Side Stories
Insider
Advertisement
6. How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
• When combining my main product with the ancillary text, I realized that to make it effective I need to keep
consistency between both the main page and the poster. For that, I had to follow same colors, logo and
overall image of the product.
• Firstly I realized to make the go hands in hands, I need to keep the same font for the masthead and the
poster font itself.
Same Logos and
Font
7. • After critical evaluation of my main product and ancillary's I realized although my products do combine
effectively. My poster uses a consistent color scheme with my main product with the black fonts.
Furthermore the blurred image in the background seeks the attention at the phrases written in bold. This
will help attract more target audience onto buying and reading the local newspaper.
• The second ancillary task; Radio Ad had a great combination to that of the main product; Newspaper. The
radio ad does advertise the newspaper to a greater level, as it gives a briefing of the newspaper name,
type and the date of it being issued to the store. The radio ad makes a effective combination as its spreads
the main idea of without becoming boring for the listeners.
8. What have you learnt from your audience
feedback?
• In the media, and everyday life in general, getting to know what the audience think is essential! So this is
why people choose to ask the audience for their feedback, as it is them who will be using and paying for
the end product. This is why I carried a research questionnaire before working on my final product. The
questionnaire from my target audience in the research and development stage was very helpful. I asked
some basic questions regarding the newspaper. The basic questions helped me decide on what kind of
newspaper I need to work on. There are some of the questions which were of great help when I started
designing my newspaper;
• This question helped me know what percent of my target audience actually reads the news paper daily.
9. • I asked this question to check if the headline really mattered, the audience reviews gave me the idea that I
need to work on my headlines of the main article and the sub articles as it is the main focus area for the
audience. So this way I kept the font large and bold to stand out the newspaper.
• This question was very important as it made me realize that I have to give equal attention to my headlines
and images, because looking at the audience reviews it was pretty obvious that these were the main areas
of focus.
10. • This question also turned out to be very helpful as it gave me the main idea on which sections I had to pay
more attention to as they were the audiences favorite sections of reading. So metro section had to be
made more crispy where as daily news and sports were to be given equal share of attention.
• The targeted audience was pretty interested in add-ins in the newspaper so I had to had research on this
section specifically so I can please my audience well.
11. • It was a relief to have the audience give their preference on this part on whether to or not to have the full
story on the front page. And hence, after getting the audience opinion, I made my front page accordingly.
12. How did you use media technologies in the
construction, research planning and evaluation
stages?
• Hardware Used:
To capture For the working on the
Images. newspaper
For the placement
of the camera Radio Station, for the
making of the ad
13. • Software Used:
Photoshop for the production
of the newspaper.
Slideshare for uploading material.
Eg Questionnaire results.
Dafont for various fonts, when
deciding for the final font,
Yourlisten.com for uploading
the radio ad.
Blogger.com
Photoscape for editing
newspaper pictures.
14. Itunes for buying the song for
Radio Ad.
Microsoft Word for article
writing and corrections.
Microsoft PowerPoint for
slide making.
Audacity for Merging Voice
and Music for Radio Ad.
Window Image Viewer
BSI for Radio Ad.
