Adverts - Hypnothearapy

I'm going to write down the process I've used to create the hypnotherapy advert. At the start I already had my plan in mind, this can be seen on the layout post. This will be slightly different to the plan as I could not get a photo of two entire red roses, but I feel the new close up works better as the colour is softer and more interesting to look at as the light if filtering through some of the top petals. I've created this in photoshop.

1. Open photoshop with the main image (in this case, the rose photo) and then re-size it to what you require.

2. Create a new layer, name it background and draw a white rectangle.

3. Go back to the layer with the rose image and delete anything on it that you don't want, for example, the background or any excess leaves. Make sure that this layer is above the background layer.

4. Create a new layer called text. Then click on the text tool and write what you want to be in the advert, such as what the advert is for, what it can help with, who's giving the service and contact details.

And there you have it;

Mini - Evaluation;  The rose image works well with the service being given as holistic therapy is often to do with nature, also, pink roses often symbolise kindness, gentleness and appreciation and the colour white is also to do with purity and calm, which is something that the treatment helps you to gradually become. The contact details are essential to an advert - how else will you get the service? Additionally, the fact that the practitioner is a doctor, this may appeal to an audience as there is evidence that they know what they are doing, obviously people can't commit libel/slander/fraud but this isn't real. It also fits in with the basic conventions of a holistic treatment advert.

Font

For my practical production, I will need to decide on a font. Often, fonts are broken down into two catogories; serif and sans serif. For instance...



Sans-serif (Arial)

 




Serif (Century Schoolbook)

'Sans' is a French word meaning 'without', therefore sans-serif means that it is without the little curls or feet. It is generally belived that serif fonts are used to make reading the text more easily, whether that be for a magazine, book or newspaper article. Sans-serif are usually used on a website so it strains the eyes less. For my production, I am hoping to use a combination of these, I will be most likely to use serif more often, perhaps for articles, and then maybe sans serif for adverts. For the masthead I'm hoping to use a fairly unique font (perhaps taken from dafont.com) in order to make my publication stand out a bit more, despite conventions, as I feel this would attract more readers. Additionally, I may want to create a more individual newspaper rather than being too conventional, of course I'm still generating ideas and may change this.

My chosen fonts are: Futura
                                  Georgia
                                  Geneva

Colour Scheme

The colour scheme will be important, as you have seen, when I was analysing some newspaper logos I had associated the colours with different things. This is what my audience will also do.

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Red is the colour of fire, blood, danger, love, energy, strength, power, determination, passion and desire. It is very emotially intense and has high visiblity, it normally brings text and images to the foreground.

Variations include;

Light red represents joy, sexuality, passion, sensitivity, and love.
Pink signifies romance, love, and friendship. It denotes feminine qualities and passiveness.
Dark red is associated with vigor, willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath.
Brown suggests stability and denotes masculine qualities.
Reddish-brown is associated with harvest and fall
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Orange is a warm colour associated with joy, sunshine, tropics and the exotic. It often, but does not always, represent enthusiasm, facination, creativity, happiness, sucess and encouragement. This also has quite high visibilty when used.

Dark orange can mean deceit and distrust.
Red-orange corresponds to desire, sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression, and thirst for action.
Gold evokes the feeling of prestige. The meaning of gold is illumination, wisdom, and wealth. Gold often symbolizes high quality.

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Yellow is quite difficult to see against a white background, especially when the text is narrow. When used appropriatley, however it is quite eye catching. It is associated with happiness, intellect and energy. It can also be associated with negative things, for example, warning signs or cowardice.

Dull (dingy) yellow represents caution, decay, sickness, and jealousy.
Light yellow is associated with intellect, freshness, and joy.

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Green is usually thought of as the colour of nature. It connotes freshness, growth, harmony, a novice, saftey and money. It is not s eye catching as many other colours but is normally pleasing to look at.

Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, and jealousy.
Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy.
Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection.
Olive green is the traditional color of peace.
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Blue is often associated with depth and stability, appropriate, because it is the colour of the sky and the sea. It symbolised trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, health, tranquility, masculinity, intelligence and truth.


Light blue is associated with health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.
Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.
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Purple is associated with royalty, power, intelligence, nobility, luxury, and ambition, wealth, extravagance, wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic. Purple is a rare colour in nature and is sometimes seen as artificial.


Light purple evokes romantic and nostalgic feelings.
Deep purple evokes gloom and sad feelings. It can cause frustration.
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White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, perfection, coolness and cleanliness, modernity and technology. A variation of this could be grey. I am unlikely to use this colour except on the paper though :P
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Black is often associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery. This is my most likely colour as it has easy visibility and fits in with the conventions of format.




My chosen colours are;


Purple as it is associated with intelligence, wisdom, creativity and independence, which matches with the ideology of my paper, olive green because it is associated with nature and peace, black as it is a useful basic colour and has easy visibility.

LAYOUTS!

These are my logo ideas. On the page I wrote the pros and cos of each image and of the image's implications on the newspaper.

I have asked some of my interviewees which they liked best and which they thought would work well with the ideology. The wheel was the most popular and the cathedral the least popular.

My theme/priority was to find a symbol which represented Bristol, I feel that if I chose the wheel that this would in part represent Bristol as it is known as a cycling city. Additionally, the city is always on the go and the travelling implication in this symbol works with this. Another priority/theme is that the symbol MUST match with the rest of the paper, for example, the tree could represent how the paper is a source of information for people.

These are combinations of logos and the titles I came up with previously. I felt that the combination of Nomad and the wheel symbol worked particularly well. I did not decide to go for any with 'telegraph', 'express' or any word used in a real life newspaper because I felt this had been done too many times before and was pretty mainstream. I also asked which titles the interviewees liked best, these included; Daily Ignite, The Source, The Brig, Nomad and Daily Chalkboard, luckily I liked these choices and that they fitted in with the way I want the paper to go.

Of course, a common convention of a newspaper is to have adverts. In my interviews, the most common adverts my interviewees looked at were to do with home help such as building work, holistic therapies and family events, therefore I decided to mix practicality and leisure and create a plasterer ad, a firework display ad and an advert for hypnotherapy, which differs from (brilliant) papers like The Spark as The Spark only has holistic therapies and eco-products and spiritual events in their adverts.

I've come up with two possible designs for a front page, this one sticks with the conventional newspaper front page, for example, it is partially modelled on the old Evening Post and holds typical features such as a large headline and a smaller headline, jump lines, by-lines, ears et. cetera. I feel this would appeal to a larger audience, the traditional layout would appeal to more mature audience, the colour to a younger. The colours would also be fairly neutral, i.e. - not pink or blue, typically gender assigned colours - so that it does not appeal to just one gender. Ideology is also important, this is why one of the ears contains an advertisement for some editorial content in the paper on eco-friendly tips. This hopefully will let potential audience member know about what the producers views are without having to filter the news content to conform to a typically alternative view, for example, The Spark paper only gives news to do with global warming or human rights activists. This paper will have a higher level of this kind of news, but will also have general news (for example crime and school stories).

This is a layout for the inside debates page. A convention that local newspapers often have is a page where local people share their opinions on a particular subject. I drew the idea of two columnists writing their opinions on each side of the debate from studying Grazia magazine in AS. I thought adding this to a local newspaper would perhaps slightly modernise the genre whilst appealing to a wider audience, for example, not just people in an older demographic who have more concern with the community but perhaps a younger demographic. This may be able to challenge the stereotypical representation that young people don't care very much about anything apart from drinking or vandalising, especially if they are seen in the paper sharing their opinion, even more so if it is a valid argument.

This is the second of my front page layouts. This one subverts some of the conventions of a traditional local newspaper, which I like. Often people don't read newspapers because they assume they are boring, this may attract a younger demographic, perhaps not anybody under eighteen but perhaps people in the 20 - 30 age range. This would have more colour than the other layout, particularly in the masthead and ears. Additionally, this gives precedence to the content of the paper, rather than to which paper it is and whatever award they've won.  Despite this, I feel that it is a little blocky - everything is organised inside a box, a little like Tetris - and that it does not flow as well as the other front page layout.

This is a generic layout for a double page spread.

On the left there is a main story surrounded by four news-in-brief sections. On the right there are two stories, one will be on crime and the other about a charity event. I've noticed that local newspapers often mix up different types of stories on one page, again because they want to appeal to a range of niche audiences. In my newspaper, it would be divided up into different sections, identifiable not by a large contents page but by different categories at the tops of the page, for example; news, debates, you ( the reader), fashion and home, interviews, horoscopes and puzzles, jobs, classified, et.c.

Story Planning

For my newspaper I will need to come up with several spoof stories. I have been looking at what has been in the news recently, such as the UK riots, and trying to see what kind of stories I could come up with to tie in with those, rather than coming up with a 'cat stuck up a tree' story, although that may be included as a small side story.

Meow.

These stories will also have to tie in with the ideology of my paper, for example, if somebody who had contributed highly to this country, would my paper not care about this individual, being bias to something like the BNP, or would it object, like Amnesty International? I should also create a generic school related story, as these seem to be prominent conventions of a local newspaper. I have come up with some layouts, so I'll now be able to work out how many stories I will need and begin planning them, my deadline for this will be Friday 16th September.

Update: I've finished my layouts and will be putting them up ASAP. The stories I need to plan and write will be;

• Journalist returns home (front page)
• St. Nicholas' Market in danger of closing (front page news in brief + links to a debate page)
• School does an event to do with Isambard Kingdom Brunel
• Crime conviction story
• Charity event raises ... 
• Science advances (news in brief)
• New store debut (news in brief)
• Cat rescued from tree (news in brief)
• Somebody wins a writing competition (news in brief)

I've also worked out the photos that I need to accompany the stories or to use in my ads;

• 1 Mugshot
• 1 of somebody winning a race
• Celebrity and children posing in school area
• Journalist posing outside of the airport
• 2 columnists for the debate section
• St. Nick's market entrance
• A Nokia phone
• Spatula
• Roses
• Young child wearing uniform and top hat
• Feminist with a protest sign
• A cat stuck in a tree with a ladder beside it

Audience

Mass Audience - Encompasses a large demographic

Niche Audience - Targeted on a particular aspect of an individual, e.g - gender. With this, the media can attract a new audience whilst still appealing to regular consumers.

Narrow Casting - Mass audience does not exist. This is commonly used in advertising to identify and target key audience subjects, for example, recommendations based on you previously viewed videos on YouTube, or recommendations for things on Facebook based on your previous 'likes'.

Stuart Hall - Reception Theory

In the 1980s and 90s lots of work was done into the way individuals received a text and interpreted it and how their individual circumstances affected this.



Stuart Hall



This theory is based on Hall's Encoding/Decoding paradigm. This model described the relationship between media producers and their audiences - the text is encoded by the producer and decoded by the reader. There may be differences between two different readings of the same code, which may have been a problem for the producers when it come to creating new texts that appeal to a target audience. Therefore, producers can stick to established codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations and what appeals to them, the producers can influence the audience and create some agreement on the meaning of the code.

For example, Apple released an iconic advert in which several silhouettes danced to music on their ipod. The producers hope that audiences would interpret that music is fun and that owning an ipod will provide the consumer with elation, perhaps even make them good at dancing or more attractive than they already are. However, the reader may take a different stance on the meaning of the advert, perhaps even were offended or irritated by it.

Preferred reading is the way the producers want the audience to view the text. Oppositional reading is when the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own interpretation of the text. Negotiated reading is a compromise between the dominant and opposition readings and agrees in part with the producers, but also creates their own take on the inferred meaning.

Age, gender, race, culture, financial situation and geographical location also have an impact on the audience's interpretation and on the producers' target demographic.

Taking this theory into account, I need to ask myself several questions in relation to my project;

• How am I targeting my audience?
• What kind of demographic are they - mass, niche or narrowcast?
• And how will their different situational factors affect who I target and how they will interpret my text?

Findings from Interviews II

The last post I did on the findings from my audience research was a little too long so I've decided to continue in a second post.

Questions for those who don't read newspapers


1.  Why don't you read newspapers?

Most said because it was boring or that they couldn't be bothered to put the effort in. One person stated that they're "full of nonsense"

2.  If you did read a newspaper, what paper would you ideally read and what articles?

Most said that they don't know. One said the Mercury because it is usually somewhere in the house, but that would only be to pass the time. Most said that they wouldn't really care about the content. One said that he would check the sport pages.

3. What would you not read?

Popular answers: The Sun, The Mail and Portishead people.

4. What would make you buy or read a newspaper, if you were to read/buy it?

Popular answers include; If there is an interesting on the front page, if it were aesthetically pleasing, if it were free, if somebody asked them (for example if they went out to get a paper for their mother because they were going shopping anyway).

5.What would be the ideal price for a paper?

Most said free, one said 50p.

6. What would you want to be included in a paper if you could choose anything?

People said; human interest stories and other people's problems, more variation, child orientated sections, no bias.

7. What are your views?

Popular opinions; disagrees with religion, they don't like politicians, stop global warming, only let immigrants in if they have something to contribute to our society.

8 . Do you feel that there is a newspaper with the same views as you?

Most said no and that there are gaps in the market, one said that the Independent is the closest and that no one paper could cater for everybody.

9. What layout would you look for if you were to get a paper?

Most replied that colour scheme is important, one stated that it shouldn't be too crowded and should have a good balance of pictures and text.