Practical: Front cover

TASK -  Create a Front cover for The Daily Mail including all elements of an example cover for a made up story. 

Planning:

Story:

- Indiana Savannah - Friends with Meghan since 2005, used to be her make-up artist on set of NCIS and has known about the affair all along. She is friends with Brett and advises him to cut Meghan out of her life.
-Brett Carpenter is a film producer and is 32 years old. Him and Meghan were childhood friends and started to be more close in 2005 where they were 'touchy feely.'
- Meghan Markle 'behaved appallingly' and it has been said that she was with Harry for publicity and to boost herself up the social ladder.
- Prince Harry found text messages between the two - "Had Harry - Prince Harry - not found those text messages then she would have probably continued the affair for the rest of her life!"
- Proof = Screenshots from Brett's text messages with Meghan.
- Brett = Outgoing, easily manipulated, nice guy, Devastated, Hurtful, thought there was a future with Meghan, Bitter, Resentful, Shame that Meghan has treated him like this. 'Poor Brett.'

Article Layout:

- Who, What, Where, When, Why.
- Further details/Quotes.
- Background, opinion, Future?

Example Newspaper:

This is the newspaper that i based my front cover off of showing 3 stories; one across the top, on the right with a photo and a main story taking up most of the space. 

My Front Cover:

Evaluation:

1) What was the task you were given and who was your target audience?

The task was to create a front cover for the Daily mail including elements of a traditional Daily Mail front cover with the main story being the one given. All other elements had to be made from scratch. The audience for this task was for the readers of the Daily Mail so aged around 25-45 for a C1, C2 audience.

2) What research did you undertake and what did you find were some typical conventions of a Daily Mail front cover - Layout, types of stories, font etc.

For research, I looked at a number of Daily Mail front covers and chose a main one to focus on. Then I analysed how the paper talked about certain issues and how they would show them. Some typical conventions included 3 main articles on the front cover; along the top, under the title of the paper was an article that would focus on what is included in the issue of the paper. Underneath that were 2 articles; one was the main story without a picture which would be the bigger headline and then an article underneath and the other was an article based more on reality which was placed along the right side of the page. The Daily Mail have their own font which they use in every single issue of the paper so i had to find a similar one and after trying some, found that the closest i could find was named platino Linotype.

3) Which Daily Mail cover did you use as your main source? What are your observations from this source?

The Daily Mail cover i chose [Located above] was a typical issue of the paper with the typical layout of a usual paper. From this i could copy the layout but choose different articles. From this source i can also see the colours that the paper use in their front cover so by seeing this, i sould copy the colour scheme so i can get an accurate copy.

4) Which areas did you find most challenging?

Throughout the whole of this task, the main issue i had was the spacing and size of different things. The main issue being the headline as i had to have it a certain size with being in the correct space. An observation of the front covers show that the Daily Mail uses nearly all of their space and rarely leaves out blanks. Therefore, i had to fill as much space as possible which i found challenging as it took a while to fit all the different elements together. Also i found writing the article difficult as i had to include the most important parts of the information while making it sound like it is from the Daily Mail perspective and viewpoint. Also, i had to write enough to fill the space.

5)What was your initial feedback? what did others say about your production? How successful do you think it is?

My initial feedback was that i had to check my grammar throughout the article and the headlines and that my top article was too serious so i changed it to the article it is now so it is more conventional. Also, i got feedback that my writing needed to be smaller in my article so that more could be fit in and so it was more typical to be Daily Mail. Other than these critics, my production was said to be good and my choice of stories, headline and wording was good. Overall, i feel like my end product was successful as it looks like a front cover of a Daily Mail issue.

6) Identify what went well and with hindsight, what would be done differently.

Overall, my front cover was shown to be very successful as it fitted with the conventions of the newspaper. All of my articles were said to be typical of the paper, my writing in the article was said to be conventional, i had a good choice of photos and my headlines were very good. However, in hindsight, my font in the article could be smaller to look identical to a typical front cover and then i could fit some more writing in and also, i could have worked slightly more on my spacing in some areas but overall i think my front cover was successful.

7) What have you learnt from completing this task?

From this task, i have learnt about all of the conventions of the Daily Mail and have focused on each element in more depth and have realised why they have done this. Also, through my research for the task, i have found many front covers for the Daily Mail and have seen how they approach different issues showing their views and biased thoughts.