2nd Ancillary Task - Double page spread in a listings magazine

For our seconds ancillary task we have decided to do a double page spread in listings magazine. We chose this over a radio broadcast as we felt it would be easier and more exciting to do. Therefore we decided to do some research regarding listing magazines and their articles, particulary the RadioTimes.













As you can see, these are both classic images of a double page spread article.
For example both of these begin with a larger first letter at the beginning of some paragraphs, they also have a dominating picture which gains the attention of the consumers. With regards to pictures they both also have smaller images around to make it more visual and interesting. These smaller images also have captions to explain to the reader what the image is about, which is effective. They also seem to have a large title which is easy to read, these titles are also in colour.












The writing aspect of these articles are also similar. For example they both have a standard black font which gives it a more professional look to it. It is also kept neat by the fact they are writen in paragraphs to make it an easier read and also how they are put into columns which I believe is expected.


Both of these above images do not reveal all of the key features I do not feel, however other images from listings magazines do share more key features.

For example, these two images are from magazines, the first RadioTimes, which I believe myself and Conor may be concentrating on more so. As you can see these images have the name of the magazine they are from, which is seen as a key feature, they also have the date in which the article was created and some have the time if they are relating to a programme which we will be. These images also stick to the other key features, such as neat columns and black fonts. They also have the larger letter at the beginning of some paragraphs and share a dominating image along with a large title.

Many articles also have the page number at either the bottom or the top of the page, with many articles also having a sub heading with a brief summary of the article in.
With taking these key features into account, myself and Conor will have to stick with these and with the layouts of these articles in order to make ours look as professional as possible.

First ancillary task update

Myself and Conor have discussed our first ancillary task, and we have changed our minds regarding the image and layout of the poster.





Originally we had decided it would be best to use the image above, however after considering the feedback we decided that the image was too blurry and we could not get a better quality image. Therefore we opted to choose the idea below, we believed the image had more relevance as it was taken directly from our main production and the colours worked much better. However yet again with some feedback it was clear to us, people believed the image was too dark and people could not tell what it was unless they had seen our main production. The Channel 4 logo also was not sharp enough, therefore all together it did not look like a professional product.




FINALLY, we have decided on an image and the colour of text and the layout. The image below shows our final product. We believe the image is simplistic yet affective, it is an unusual image which could drag the consumer to look at it, which is one of our main aims. We also believe taking the image of the image used for our poster will be more beneficial as the examples we have used in our research all seem to not be taken from the production itself.

Teacher and Student feedback

This is the image of our poster once it had been printed out, then our teachers put comments about it on post-it notes so we could have a visual feedback sheet.
The first comment was that the main image was a bit too blurry, I agreed with this comment however I also believe that this was printed out in a much larger size than it would appear in a newspaper or magazine, therefore the blur would not show as much.

Also our teachers believed the background of the text wasn't equal on all of the sides, which didn't look good in my eyes either. Therefore this will have to be tweaked to make it look like more of a professional product, which is fairly easy to do and is not likely to be a massive problem.

We were also informed that the image of the car in the background should be blurred out a bit to make the front image stand out more. On top of this we got told that maybe it would be better if we made the front image of the screwed up poster lighter, possibly with the 'sharpen' tool.


This is the image of the added in comments from students.
The first comment explains that the font is a bit blurry, which I did not notice at first, therefore I will have to look at this in more detail and try to reduce the blur. However this also goes back to my point of the image which was printed off is much larger than it will be for the final piece.

We were also informed that the image was too simple and maybe a different image would be more beneficial, we have taken this point into consideration as we are having serious thoughts about changing the image to the CCTV image.

Finally, a student told us that the text boxes were too unclear, therefore we will consider making them stand out more, possibly with a change of colour or making them bigger.

To conclude I feel the feedback has been good, and we have had the chance to think about the pro's and cons of our image. Therefore we shall consider the feedback and seek to make our product as proffesional and eye-catching as we can.

Posters + Feedback

For each of my final thee ideas I thought it would be beneficial to receive some feedback to see what a variety of people thought about them, instead on focusing solely on my choice.

The first idea was the CCTV camera image.

My mother and sister believed that this was the best one in their eyes. My sister explained the dark colours gave it a dark feel to it, and because the genre is a missing person she believed it fitted in well. My mother believed the CCTV picture was also very effective as it shows Michael walking away, which she felt was a good addition as the documentary was questioning his motives on that night.
Two of my friends aged seventeen and eighteen also believed that it was a good advert; one believed it was well structured whereas my other friend believed the colour scheme was ‘spot on’.
However my uncle did not believe that it was a good advert, he did not necessarily think it was bad, but he believed the advert was too dark and too plain. He thought it looked like there wasn’t enough effort put in to creating it.
I personally liked this one the most out of all of mine, this was because I thought the colours worked well together, and I thought the image had the greatest meaning out of all of my ideas. I also believe the dark feel to it gave a great resemblance of the genre of the documentary as it isn’t supposed to be an upbeat and happy documentary as there is a teenager who has been lost.

My second idea was another image taken from our documentary which was a picture of a screwed up ‘missing person poster’ of Michael Evans.

This was the favourite of the other three people whose opinions I asked for, which was two of my friends and my uncle. My uncle believe he felt this one had ‘more to it’, he went on to say that it looked more prepared and he felt more thought had gone into it, which I was pleased to hear. One of my friends also believed the image being blurred in the background gave the poster a greater meaning, which he believed was good. My other friend also went onto say that he preferred the image and the way I had separated the word ‘missing’ from the other text. On the other hand my mother and sister shared the view that although they thought the image was fairly good they did not like the colour scheme, and by that they meant they did not believe the whitish/grey colour for the Channel 4 logo and the background of the text was not the best colour to use, therefore I will consider different colours.
This is my second favourite idea as I liked the image as I feel the screwed up poster portrayed a missing person who is becoming slowly forgotten, which the documentary is aiming to avoid as they want to find the missing person. I also liked the colour scheme at first however the more I look at it, I agree with the people who have given me feedback, I believe a different colour would be better, which I believe Conor has done.

The third and final idea was not made favourite by anyone, which was the image of forensics leaving a house.

It seemed the main reason was due to the main image. All five people who I asked to give their opinions on the idea explained that they didn’t believe the image had much relevance to the genre of the documentary, and now I have taken this information in, I do feel it was a bit over the top, however I just wanted to have an advert with a different sort of image to see how it would work and to see the reaction of people giving feedback. If I had not done this I never would have known, therefore I am pleased I tried a different sort of image on one of my ideas.
I liked the colour scheme of this idea, however I do agree with the others, in the way that the image is a bit over the top for someone is missing, I believe it gives the impression that the police assume he may be dead, which is not the idea our documentary was intended to give out.

Creating the poster

Myself and Conor thought it would be beneficial if we done our own seperate mock-ups of potential adverts for the documentaries and then we could then compare eachothers, recieve feedback and seek ways to improve eachothers, possibly by using ideas from eachothers ideas and putting them together.
I did not have a great experience of photoshop before beginning this task, however spending some time with my teacher and with some help from Conor I was able to understand the different tools and what they do.

I learnt quickly how to change the colour of fonts, and important elements such as the Channel 4 logo, by using the shortcut Ctrl + U. This helped me significantly to make my adverts. I also learnt about the magic whip tool and layers.

Channel 4 documentary in a newspaper

In this post I will focus specifically on a Channel 4 advert which is published in a newspaper, this is because our advert is intended to feature in a newspaper or magazine.

This is a picture taken straight from a newspaper which shows an advert of a documentary which is focusing on the pregnancy of certain women. This advert has the same lay out as the typical channel 4 advert, for example it has the large image to capture the consumers eye, which also can be slightly controversial (babies on a conveyer belt). It also has met what is expected in terms of the same colour for the Channel 4 logo and the background for the text.



This is a picture of the same advert just from the view of the whole two page spread, therefore you can see the size of the advert in relation to the pages.
As you can see the advert is the size of half a page, which I believe is a good size. I say this because as you can see there is a Ryanair advert on the other page however, I believe this size would not enhance the documentary advert, because the size would not be the same, however the large Ryanair advert may draw consumers to that page, which is a bonus for Channel 4, as their advert is right next to it.

Therefore when myself and Conor are preparing our advert we will take this into account, with regards to the size of the image and what its surroundings are.