Initial Research into Newspapers.

Definition

[Wikipedia] "A newspaper is a regularly scheduled publication containing news, information, and advertising, usually printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on political events, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports."

Newspapers Should...

ü Attract the readers into wanting to buy.

ü Reinforce the newspapers identity through easily recognisable style features.

ü Demonstrate the newspapers attitude towards the news of the day (make the main headline stand out).

ü Show the main stories, hopefully including better coverage of these stories than any other paper in the area.

Codes and Conventions (Front Page)

• Photographs are used to grab the attention of the readers. It may or may not be linked to the main story and is often in colour.
• Captions in newspapers are the words below a photograph which explain its meaning or describe the contents of the image.
• The Headline is usually in large bold letters, taking up the entire width of the page. The headline is always important as it is one of the first eye-catching features of a paper and determines the main story.
  
• The masthead is the newspapers title and is also an eye-catching feature of a newspaper. It has to remain recognisable to provide the newspapers identity.
• News stores are split into columns for an easier read and make the paper look less complicated.

This allows readers to stop reading at any point and still understand the basis of the story gaining enough information needed such as who, what, where, why and when.

Colours Used on Masthead

• Liverpool Echo - Red + Blue
• The Mirror - Red
• The Daily Star - Red
• Merseymart - Red + Blue
• Knowsley Challenge - Red
• News of the World - Red

Looking at some of the more popular newspapers, it is evident that the colour red plays an important part in mastheads as it is an eye catching colour and stands out very well.

Fonts

After looking over several websites, I discovered that these fonts are commonly used in newspapers such as The Mirror and the Guardian;

Font One / Franklin Gothic Book

Font Two / Times New Roman

Font Three / Bodoni

Font FOUR / Impact (usually used for headlines)

Font Five / Microsoft Sans Serif.

Although the fonts are common in newspapers, their style may not appeal to my age range and may seem less interesting than other possible choices. As I have begun research on fonts, I will create several practise fonts which I like and would think are suitable for a newspaper and hold a focus group to determine which fonts others like, and hopefully, come up with a decision on which is best to use.