My newspaper's puzzle.

As it shows on my newspaper drawn plan i am choosing to include one puzzle on the second page. In my focus group, i found out that in order to have a new take on a traditional design, it would be a good idea to have a new take on a traditional puzzle.

My previous research on puzzles shows me that the puzzles depend on the type of audience the newspaper attracts. For example, a tabloid newspaper which features celebrities is more likely have puzzles which are celebrity themed.
On this post: http://oliviasmitha2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/puzzles.html I put a few websites which showed me where newspapers get their puzzles from, therefore i believe that this is the right route for me to go down when getting my puzzles for my newspaper page.

However, as i am writing this section more recently, i have decided that i want my puzzle to be number based and difficult - this is because my audience is intelligent because they6 are educated and also i want them to spend the most time in my newspaper so they will believe that £1.10 is reasonable enough to spend on a newspaper which takes them a long time to read.

So what type of puzzle takes a long time to do, can be varied in difficulties and is for the intelligent reader? - sudoku!

As sudoku is a type of puzzle which is a logic-based Japanese number placement puzzle. I myself do them frequently on various different levels of difficulty. I was going to make a list of different newspapers which choose to have sudoku in their pages however, the puzzles that newspapers have can change weekly and also, sooo many newspapers have sudoku in them.

History of Sudoku

The recent and extreme popularity of sudoku in British newspapers came in around 2004 under the name 'Su Doku'. When one newspaper published the puzzle, another did it the next day when they saw how popular it had become overnight.


Sudoku doesn't have any copyrighted factors about it as they are just a combination of numbers. This means that i can replicate the order of the numbers for my sudoku puzzle from another, existing puzzle.

I did this sudoku puzzle in my spare time just to see how difficult a difficult sudoku is:

This was really difficult, but it isn't impossible. i mustn't rely on what i think about this puzzle too much as i am not the prime target audience. If i were to put a sudoku puzzle in my newspaper i would have to then put the answer to it in the next issue - this is because in order for the reader of this issue to want to know if they got the puzzle right, they would have to buy the next issue.

I have also looked at the aesthetics of a sudoku puzzle in a newspaper. This is from a national newspaper:

There was a easy sudoku to the left of this one, giving the reader the chance to do a puzzle which suits them - and also because this newspaper has such a wide target audience it needs to cater for most people, therefore put in puzzles of different difficulties.

I researched this because i wanted to see how newspapers of this present time layout their sudoku puzzles. From this scanned page i can see that the solutions to yesterday's puzzle are to the left, therefore it pushes the reader to buy the next issue to find the answers and puzzles.

There is also instructions of what to do which i have written one myself. I will put this next to my puzzle:

"Enter numbers into the blank spaces so that each row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9."

This is a simple way of saying what i want. i didn't want to write too much because more than likely the reader knows what they are doing, I'm just informing those who surprisingly don't.

This is my first newspaper issue, therefore i do not need to write 'yesterday's solutions' because there was no yesterday. If i were making many issues of this newspaper, i would of course after the first issue put the solutions down. 

I would also have to state that this is a 'diffucult' puzzle so the readers no and they aren't caught off guard. I know i could have made a puzzle which made like a competition, where the reader sends their completed puzzle in the post to see if they have got everything right in order to then win a prize, however i felt like my target audience want something quick to read and the purpose of my newspaper is to be a form of quick intellectual information.

Finally, having a sudoku puzzle supports my slogan of culture.

A drawn plan of my newspaper poster.

I have said throughout this planning process that my poster is going to be very traditional-looking as i feel like the public knows what these posters are advertsing, they are identifyable enough and they clearly work. they have been used for many years, therefore it would be a very big risk for me to change the way they look and are presented.

After a lot of reasearch, i now think its about time i plan the layout of my poster eventhough it would still be a very traditional layout. I thought i should just do one so i have something to follow when making it on PhotoShop.

I also said in a recent post that i am going to make my newspaper pages and radio advert before my poster as i feel that these will take the most planning and making. But i thought i would just plan what i am going to do for my poster in order to have myself organised.

So here is my hand-drawn plan of my poster layout:

Looking at my very faint (as i done it in pencil not realising how it would turn out on the scan!) plan of the layout of my newspaper i can see that it is very simple and is traditional of what a newspaper sandwich board poster looks like which was my aim all along with the poster. This is because people know what they look like and what they are advertising and as this design has been used for years it must work. I also think it is bold and eye-catching and people know what the poster is advertising.

I will follow this plan when making my poster which will probably be done when i have finished my radio advert and newspaper pages.

Photos for my newspaper.

I just remembered that i need to take the photos for my newspaper article. To make it clear about what photos i need to collect together, i have decided to make a list of the ones i need:

• A photo of Johnny Depp which isn't copyrighted, i may have to keep searching on the internet for this as I'm sure I'm not going to bump into him any time soon.
• A trampoline. It for my newspaper headline article which is quite traditional i have decided that i do not want many photos for this as i wont have enough room.
• A photo of some art from a local new artist. I want a photo of the art and not the artist as i think that this is something which would hook the reader more. I do art A-level (not that i think my art is to professional standard) which i could take a picture of in order to support my small article about it.
• The new music band i am writing about needs a photo to support it, so i have decided to create my own small CD cover to support the article. I will do this by photoshop as a CD cover can look like anything which isn't offencive.
• A picture to support the article of fun days out for the family.

I figured out the amount of photos i need by looking back at my drawn plan layout post: http://oliviasmitha2mediastudies.blogspot.com/2011/11/drawn-plan-of-page-layout.html


This section was written after i had just started to make my newspaper's first page:

Here are the photos which i have taken myself and will use:

For the artist article:

I based what i had written in the article around this painting and the imaginary collection which this painting may have been a part of.

The music article: 

Thia photo will be on the second page. I couldnt decide whether or not to have a photo of the artist or their album cover. But i came to the conclusion of what would be more possible to achieve - a music album cover. in order to decide this i looked at a very well known music magazine which has reviews about albums all the time

Johnny Depp film article:

I was a bit concerned as to how i would get a photo for this article as i knew i wouldnt be able to get a photo of Johnny depp myself and also any other photo of him is copyrighted. So instead of getting a photo of him, i chose to get a photo linking to the subject of my article. This gets the reader questioning as to what the article is about if it is also about Johnny Depp. This ffice looks bleak and done - just like the ordinary office.

Family days out article:

                          

I took this a while ago (years ago in fact and found it on my pc) and is taken in a local theme park - therefore if a reader likes the look of this rollercoaster it can be found near them. It is a bright and colourful photo and respresents speed and fun - which would makes families interested.

Order of what I am going to do.

This is a post about just to sum up when i am going to do my poster, radio advert and my newspaper pages. I have been making progress on them all but just to make it clear that i am trying to get my newspaper pages done and my radio advert done before my poster. This is because the radio advert and newspaper pages are going to take longer to produce than the poster, mainly due to the amount of content and the length of the production of them.

        

Making my newspaper page 1.

Now that i have planned what my layout of my pages are going to be, the colours, size of the page and that im not going to take too much time writing it, i think its about time that i should start actually making the page! I am going to record everything that i do and mistakes and problems that hopefully do not come up.

I couldnt decide whether i should do a quick test run of my newspaper page to really know what i was doing as i havent really made a realistic - looking newspaper before. I will only do the newspaper's front page on this post so i can really get to know what i am doing and to break it up so it isnt so confusing.

I also decided that i would do it like the pros and make it on the good ole' fashioned Microsoft Publisher so i can change the size of the page i want - to the traditional newspaper size like i planned. I understand that this possibly be the oldest publisher version available, however, it is the only one i can use therefore have to make the best of this situation.

                                      



I made my newspaper page by looking at my drawn plan layout and all of the plans i have previously done and finalized.

Writing my radio advert script.

This is the part when i start deciding what my speaker is going to say in my radio advert which will advertise my newspaper as a whole, not my headline. This is because a headline only lasts a day, and i would like my radio advert to be on the radio for more than a day in order to gain the most listeners.

Thoughout my research and plans i decided that i would like make a radio advert which was heard on most local radio stations in the Norfolk area as educated people don't all listen to one particular radio station.

When writing the script, i kept in mind that i wanted o repeat specific important words so that they would drum into my listeners head and they then remember it. It didn't take long to write as i knew what sort of script i was going for - quick, informative, but not too formal or informal - a balance - in order for listeners not to feel intimidated or have the wrong impression of my newspaper.

After i wrote my script, i read it out loud to a timer in order to find out roughly how long the advert would be if i was recording. It turned out to be exactly 23 seconds long - which i believe isn't too long or too short. It gave me the right amount of time to include all of the important information i wanted. I decided to write the script before finding out how long it would be because i knew that i could always edit the script if it is too long or short.

So here is the script which i wrote, then printed out and then annotated to explain why i did certain things to it and what effect it has on the audience:

Overall, i have decided to stick with this script as i believe it is easy for my narrator to say and has a lot of different and good information about my newspaper in it such as the price, the article content, and how often it is sold.

Next Step: find a male voice for me to record saying this script on my ipod. I will not edit the recording because this will take up a lot of time and also, i think it will not make the advert flow as nicely if it has been frequently cut. I don't think that i will have music in the background because it could over shadow what the speaker is saying, and this is the most important bit.

Changes in the price of my newspaper.

This post should have been done a while ago but have done it now. From my focus group i found that my plan of making a newspaper which is printed on glossy paper, to the size of a normal local newspaper and in colour would be VERY expensive to produce, therefore raising the price of my production costs.

I know i said in my post about the definite ideas that i am going to do for my newspaper was to use glossy paper, after i did my research with my focus group i found that this wasn't such a good idea.

Mistake! I believe that i should have done my definitive ideas post AFTER i had done my focus group research!

So i have decided to make a few changes:

I am still going to make my newspaper on traditional local newspaper sized paper, however only on slightly glossy paper so that it is a new take and makes the entire newspaper look more up-market. You can get paper like this, so it isnt as glossy as magazines but has a slight sheen to it. This is so my newspaper doesnt get mistaken as a magazine but still looks a bit more up market. I also think that the glossier the paper, the longer the magazine will last - therefore would be more suitable for a WEEKLY newspaper.

I have also decided to not use so much colour on my newspaper (i will decide for definite when i actually come to make it) as it will make the production costs very high and very slow.

I will also raise the price of my newspaper to £1.10. Even though this is'nt a dramatic rise in the price it would still make a difference if i was to put this newspaper on the market.

P.s. with my layout plans etc, the places where it says £1, now means £1.10!

Why £1.10?

The main reason for this price is because of how much it will cost me to produce the newspaper if it was going to be put on the market - meaning the paper and ink. I have done a bit more research into the cost of other newspapers but im linking it to the paper and ink costs.

My target audience may percieve this as reasonable because my newspaper is weekly, the information such as the family events lasts longer than a week and also, from my first two pages i can tell that it would be a informative newspaper if it were to be made full.

I have done some research into the cost per page to make a newspaper - total printing costs divided by the number of pages. It was quite difficult to find out how much printing some exisiting newspapers are so i decided to look at printing companies who print newspapers in order to find out.

I found a printing company who print some fairly well known free music magazines in my local area such as Outline and Maddog: http://www.quotemeprint.com/newspapers/online_quote.

I was then able to click on a link which took me to a really good page which gave me a quote as to what it would cost for me to print my newspaper!

The first quote i did i based on the existing local newspaper 'Evening News' to get a rough idea of what it costs for them to print. However, i have kept in mind that this newspaper probably get money off due to the amount of printing they need so i am guessing that the final figure of what comes up is the maximum of what it could cost to print. From this i can then find out how much it costs to print just one page of that newspaper.

I found that the problem i had with this was that i wasnt able to be very specific about what i wanted (ie, size format i was given three options), thankfully the Evening News and my newspaper plans do come under one of these. 

I didnt know what 'paper stock' meant so i searched it and found out that it means the thickness of the paper. The Evening News and my newspaper is the thinest of the two choices. I was only able to quote 64 pages and there was a minimum printing of 1000 copies.

In this print screen (left) you can see that after i typed in the quanity of pages and copies a quote comes up of £1,684 from this company in the case of the Evening News. I didnt type in the real quanity of what the Evening News needs to be printed daily as i am only using this to work out the costs for them to print each page.

I found out that this is the final cost of what it is to print 1000 copies of a 64 page newspaper in the format of the Evening News.

I then used my calculator to work out the maximum cost for the Evening News for a page and came to the conclusion that it costs them around: 0.02p  to print one page of one copy. To make it easier it costs them around £26 for one page on 1000 copies.

Now i will look at the cost it would be approximatley to print one page of my newspaper:

I said when finding out the cost of the Evening News that it is in full colour, however i found out from my focus group that this would be very expensive to produce so have decided to not be just black and white or full colour - therefore i will be 'part-colour'. I have already declared how i can find this figure out, so i have just worked it out quickly the cost of one page of my newspaper:

£357 divided by 1000 divided by 4 = 0.08p

I couldnt really figure out why printing my newspaper would cost 0.06p more to print than the Evening News until i guessed that it was probably down to the quanity. The printing company may make the cost lower to print if you order a higher quanity. However, i think to print one page this is quite cheap. I wouldnt be using this company to print my newspaper (need someone more local and have got some info o this later in the post) but i was able to find out how much it does cost a newspaper to print roughly.

How i could get my newspaper printed:

I have been thinking that the size of the paper i am planning to print on isnt realistic to be printed at school, therefore i would have to find a printing company for them to do so. I have a close relative who owns a printing company in my local area. I have just e-mailed him on a social networking site to see if he prints on tabloid size paper, so hopefully he will be getting back to me with the good news that he does. if he doesnt, then i will have to search some printers that do. I will also be able to get quotes. In a future post i will write about how i will get my poster printed.

                                                           

                                                                 
Weight of paper

I did say in my definiate ideas post that i want to make my newspaper paper have a sheen to it but not overly glossy. I have late found out that this 'sheen' pape that i was talking about doesnt actually exist therefore i went on the look out for something of a similar definition.

This links to the weight of paper due to its thickness and the finsihes applied to it i.e sheen, glossy. Magazines have an increased weight beause they are glossy, and newspaper pages are quite light because the paper is so thin and have no finishes applied to them (also explains why ink can come off them when you turn the pages!). The lighter the weight of the paper the cheaper the newspaper.

I have found a website which tells me the weight of newspapers:  http://www.dimensionsguide.com/. This website gives dimensions, sizes and weights about the most ridulous things. I found a section which talks about the weights of differents papers and how the thickness of the paper effects the weight:

Overall from this research i found that newspapers look the way they do for a reason - it works - it sells newspapers - people want to buy them. The cost of making something greatly effects what it is sold for, therefore the cost of making something can effect how many people want to buyit. I hopefully get a good message back from my printing relative soon to see if he does print of tabloid sized paper!