OUGD403 Study Task 3 - Newspaper Layout

OUGD403 Study Task 3 - Newspaper Layout

Study Task- News paper Layout
Module ID: OUGD403
Module Leader: Simon Harrison Module Deadline:
Studio (Task) Deadline: 24/10/14 (09:30) 


Task

Within your group research your provided story and make design decisions informed by the impact, the tone of voice, the word count, etc.

Plan the layout, composition, colour, typography, etc.

Research into opinions and facts will help inform your design decisions and direction you take with this task.

There are no limitations on how you produce this, but you should aim to start the process hand rendered

Story given: Mario Balotelli - Shirt Swap

Mario Balotelli was seen swapping shirts with the Real Madrid defender Pepe as they both left the pitch at half-time with Liverpool 3-0 down in their Champions League Group B game at Anfield.

While researching into the story of Mario Balotelli's shirt swap, my group found that the story was clearly depicted in different ways in certain types of newspapers. Sport focused media's such as the 'The Daily Sport,' 'BBC Sports' along with tabloid newspapers such as 'The Sun' and 'The Daily Mirror' all report the shirt swap very seriously and as an outrageous act. This is shown on the cover of Liverpool's Echo Page as 'APOLOGISE' is slabbed on the centre of the back page, conveying that Balotelli has done a scandalous act as must be responsible for his actions. As Echo is Liverpool's local newspaper it is not surprising that they have chosen to take the story in such a serious manner as the act is not approved by Liverpool supporters, it harms their local pride and Echo has played upon this and only has one tone of voice.

National newspapers have also reported this story, however in very different ways. For example 'The Daily Mail' has also taken the same serious tone as Echo and used passionate wording such as 'after he ridiculously swapped shirts.' It is likely that they have chosen to report the incident as a scandalous act as The Daily Mail is aimed majority at the working classes. Although football has an enormous fan base, it is stemmed that the majority of the fan base are the working classes which is also the majority, leading the tabloid newspapers to report to the masses. The Tabloids newspapers such as The Sun, Star and Mirror are aimed squarely at the majority working classes. This also encompasses The Daily Mail along with The Express which are a slight step up and aimed at a more serious reader. The Telegraph however, which is one of the two major daily broadsheets (which is considered more intellectual;) reports the story in a more informative tone and reports the different reactions and comments. The Times, the second of the two major daily broadsheets does not in fact report this story at all.

With this research, this helped to inform our groups plan of how we would layout this story. Looking at other websites and newspapers, we found that there were similar elements in the way in which sport media is presented. Quite often the word 'Sports' on the layouts are depicted in red, this is quite prominent not only in the media but in sport supplements and stores, such as Sports direct. 

In addition the majority of sports articles we found were mainly composed of a large, impact headline, large images, minimal text and the text as an overview rather than detailed and advertisements. The three fonts that we found that are predominantly used in Sports articles were Futura Condense Bold, Ariel Bold and Franklin Gothic. These are purposely used as these fonts are very eye catching and striking to catch the audiences attention. In addition the kerning in the sports articles are quite large, along with the tracking to fill up more space in the paper and to make it easy on the eyes for readers. 

We have incorporated all these elements into our composition, layout and typography. This has allowed us to create something that fits with the style of sports media and it was really interesting learning the approach sports has to the media and how other subjects also are presented differently. I think we worked very well as a group and everybody contributed in creating and researching. Allowing to deepen our knowledge and understanding of newspaper layouts.