Gym advert design

For my second advert for my front page, I have decided to use the local gym.
The image to the right is a picture which I took for the advert, of a staff member and a member of the gym. I believe that this image will suggest that the gym is a friendly and well qualified.

I then decided to crop the picture, as I thought that it had too much space above their heads and that this made the image look unprofessional. Once I did this I then added a text box, for the title which is the name of the gym, Better Bodies. As the gym uses blue and white as its main colour scheme I decided to copy it and use it as my colour scheme for my title also. First I changed the colour to dark blue, however I then came across a problem, that you could barely see it on top of the other gym equipment because the colours are quite similar. A solution to this was to add a white border around the text, which added emphasis and made it clearly visible, even on top of the dark backgrounds. I added another text box underneath the title, which had a small amount of information about the Crash and Burn sessions at the gym. This ties in well with one of my inside stories, as I describe someones first hand experience doing the Crash and Burn and their accoplishments. By doing this I believe that I will attract more audiences as they will easily be able to find the information they want and can see how it is tied together. Placing the contact information on the right side of the advert, in smaller writing keeps the attention on the main focus on the information for Better Bodies. I also think this is the best way to layout my text on my advert because readers will want to know about the gym and what the advert is about before contacting.

Advert planned

Below is a screenshot of my advert for my front cover of my newspaper so far. I decided to scrap the idea of it being a advert for Waitrose, as I think it will be hard to get the company to let me use their logo and name. So instead I have done a similar advert as Evening Post, by doing for restaurants. Through looking back  on my research I have come up with the idea of doing it for my local Italian restaurant and it doing a promotion, "2 for 1" on pizzas which I think will attract my audience, as Portishead is quite a close community and Antonio is well known for his great pizza making and friendly communication with locals and tourists.

On the next lesson, I decided to make one of my images for my advert as being that of a pizza, made by Antonio himself. My first thought was using a logo for his restaurant but then as I researched I found he doesn't really have one that will be recognised by a large population, people usually remember just the restaurants name, as the owner is very welcoming and the Italian is named after him. I was going to try to draw a picture of the pizza, but then I thought that it would be more attractive if I used a picture of fresh delicious homemade pizza rather than a cold drawing. 

For my other image on my advert I used three rectangles to make a driving learner plate. This is a very distinguished sign, as it is known globally for all new and experienced drivers, but also generally people do know the sign. I easily created the learner plate by placing two rectangles on top of each other and moving them around so that it went into a "L" shape. I believe that this is a better way of doing the learning plate rather than using a text font as I get the angle and proportion exactly right.

The image on the right is a picture of my advert, with the new image I have done for the learning plate. 

Logo design

The image to the right is a drawing which I have done of a draft design of my logo for my newspaper, which I have talked about in a past post. I decided to go with the large bold double "P"s because my newspaper is called Portishead Post and by doing this it will make my newspaper well recognised by the pubic. By adding the statue into my logo I think this also generates popularity as readers will know where it is located and they will feel part of the community, this will also happen to the newspaper. By using the statue this gives the newspaper a chance to feel as though they are in with the community. I decided to put the double "P"'s on top of a trophy stand so that the readers understand that the newspaper is proud of being part of the Portishead community, this could conclude in customers purchasing the newspaper because of its closeness with the community. This also conveys the newspapers importance, making it seem as though it has won something and is standing above the rest of the newspapers. I have also decided to over lap the "P"'s so that it seems as though they are closely connected so that it feels as though they are together and tightly bonded. 

Although I do like my design I think that it might be too complex and chaotic as there is a lot going on for one logo. I believe that maybe if I get rid of the double "P"'s and stand, leaving my logo just the statue itself, this could be a small but powerful statement for my logo. However, this could also make it too simplistic, but looking back on my research of logos, I see that most of other newspapers logos are simplified but easily recognised.  

If I conclude in simplifying my logo, to just the statue of the human I will add two small objects. One will be the object of a newspaper rolled up in my statues hand, making it seem as though it is thrusting the newspaper into the hands of the audience. My second object would be that of golden wings on the bottom of it's feet, similar to that of the mythological, Hermes, the messenger of the Greek Gods. Also the "Mercury" newspaper, is another name for Hermes, which implies the same sense of delivering important messages quickly. 

Through doing this I think that it will imply a sense of urgency, that the newspaper needs to be delivered fast and directly to the reader. It also suggests that the newspaper is quick at delivery and always gets the news to you on time, with the most updated information. This would go well with my slogan, "News you can use" as it also implies that the newspaper is quick, because it's short and snappy.  By reinforcing that my newspaper will be more based on Hermes/Mercury rather than superman makes certain that my newspaper wont seem tacky and inelegant, as Hermes was portrayed as a classy, tasteful and muscular helper of the Gods.  

My inside page so far

The image below is my latest update for my inside page. Since my last upload I haven't changed much to the layout, this is because I didn't want to adapt too much from the conventional design of an inside page, mainly the Mercury which is in my past research. However I have decided to scrap the "Announcements"section on the left side third, mainly because this is less conventional and it is only seen in newspapers such as the Times (Nailsea, Clevedon & Portishead). To compensate for this removal I have put a small list of people who work for my newspaper which they can contact, if they have any worries or stories they want to submit. I have got this idea front the Evening Post second page, which I have written about in a past post. On the middle and right side of my newspaper I have left it the same as before because it is very similar to my style model, which is The Mercury. Although I have given my second story, which will be a less popular story, more space as before I didn't really give it enough room on the page to make it seem like a real newspaper. This also effected the amount of detail I could put in my story, so by increasing the size of the font box I have been able to achieve a short, well detailed story. 

For my next lesson I will concentrate on adding in my stories and uploading my picture for the inside page. I will also begin to this about creating my advert on Photoshop, as I have drawn it but have not began to make it. Once I have done this I will place it on my inside page. 

My front cover so far

The image below is a mock up of my front cover so far. So far I have placed all my stories on my page, including the headlines. I have almost put my masthead on the cover. As you can see I have made a few changes to the way in which the front cover looks. For starters I have re-arranged my masthead, by putting it all on the left side third, instead of central. I did this because I felt as though this will make it more bold and it also is high in conventionally as Post and Times also have placed their titles on the third side. By removing the slogan, which was once on the right side of the masthead to be underneath, I think this makes the masthead more empowering and implies it's importance. However, I have kept my logo but have moved it to the right side of my masthead, similar to the Liverpool Echo. I did this, mainly because it fitted well with the new place of my masthead and also conveys that my newspaper is very in with the community. By making the  letter "P" represent the start of both words this gives the newspapers a clear ident, for readers to recognise the newspaper.

Putting Writing On My Cover

For my front cover, I decided to do a little bit of research into trying to find out what size font most newspapers use for their stories. I used Google as my search engine and http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100105125923AAXuvI0 was the first website that came up. Yahoo informed me that majority of newspapers use a font size between 9-10. I previously thought that the font size was around 12. So by doing this research I have found that the size I would have used would have been incorrect and would not resemble a real newspaper.
I then wanted to find out what size font newspapers use for headlines so that I could aspire to the conventions of the local newspaper genre. However when using Google no websites came up with the information I needed, so I concluded that I will have to print off different sized fonts and then compare them to an actual newspaper so that I can get an actual idea.

The image on the right shows the list of different sized fonts that I have used in my search to find the prefect conventional sized headline.
Once I compared the print out to the newspaper front cover headlines I found that the size of headlines can vary around the early 20s, so I decided to use size 24.