In the task we were to replicate the front cover of the daily mail and adapt the main headline/story to be 'the break up of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle' whilst using and involving the codes and conventions of the daily mail. The target audience was aimed towards the B,C1,C2,D demographics and people who are interested in the royal family and politics.
2) What research did you undertake and what did you find were some of the typical conventions of the daily mail front cover - layout,types of stories, fonts.
When researching i decided to start off with looking at front covers of the daily mail to decide what layout would look and suit best with the main story, i also chose what paper layout i wanted to base mine off of. I then gathered some photos of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, then looked at the popular Brexit stories of that day and chose the Theresa May story of the Brexit deal/Brussels and decided to have that as a side story. When looking at the covers i found that some of the typical conventions and codes of the daily mail is that they usually have a bright column along the top with a picture, based on things like a competition to win money or an advertisement for a story inside e.g. read Jamie Oliver's best cooking tips. The Daily mail also usually have a bold title for one story then a photo for another they never have two for both, the font of the stories varies a lot too. They keep the actual article writing quite small and use many different fonts for the main headlines and side stories.
3) Which Daily Mail cover did you use as your main source? What are your observations from this source?
From looking at the cover that i chose i feel that it is overall very bold and eye-catching on all three stories. I feel it provides enough information for readers to skim read and decide whether they want to read the newspaper or not and enough pictures to feel the page and make it nice and intriguing to look at.
4) Which areas did you find the most challenging?
What i found the most challenging was finding and having the right font so they can look the same to the original because i realised that the daily mail have they're own unique hand-made fonts so it was difficult to find which ones would look the most similar. Along with this it was also difficult to get the right size of the fonts, pictures etc. so it can fit in all of the one page. Finally coming up with a catchy headline was difficult too as you had to make sure it wasn't too long or too short.
5) What was your initial feedback? What did others say about your production? How successful was it do you think?
Overall i enjoyed the task as it was interesting to create the front cover and see what Daily mail prioritises over other newspaper values. I also like creating the layout i.e. matching and creating the colours to fit the original. I found that is was quite successful as people from my class said it looked very similar to the real thing which was obviously my main target to achieve and to have the same codes and conventions presented on my front cover correctly.
6) Identify what went well and with hindsight what you do to improve/do differently.
I felt what went well personally was the top section of the newspaper as i had the same colours as the original along with a photo which made it look very realistic. I also thought what went well was the similarity with the main headline font as when comparing they looked very similar with the size and positioning. To improve and do differently would be to contain all of it in a line meaning the pictures, titles all line up and also pick 'The daily mail' header not being fuzzy and pixelated but clear.
7) Are there any areas you haven't noticed before? What have you learnt from completing this task?
What i have realised from this task is what the daily mail news values are when making a front cover but what i didn't notice was that this newspaper is extremely effective when choosing articles, as i don't read the news a lot, i noticed how effective and dramatic they make their headlines to attract readers.
