Focus Group

I have held a focus group to receive feedback on my target audiences' thoughts and opinions of what I have planned for my newspaper so far. I created a series of front page layouts and first page layouts for the audience to give me some feedback on what they think has worked best and what they like and think is interesting about them. I have also mentioned the top ten fonts that are used in newspapers to receive feedback on what they think would work best with the style and age range of my newspaper. Lastly, I will ask them what colours they think will look interesting and what they would like for the general colours in my newspaper. I have decided that I want to challenge the codes and conventions of colour in newspaper and instead of using red and blue I will change it slightly and use other successful bold colours that work well with each other and look interesting.

Here is some of the feedback I have received from discussing layouts, fonts and colours:

Layouts
Front Cover:
The majority of the people in the focus group commented that layout 3 for my front cover is original and interesting but it may be too risky as the masthead is down the left hand side of the page but they would like to see what the finished result would look like to see if it worked well or not.
They also stated that layout 1 and 4 are successful and would work well as the main story gets priority and takes up most of the page. They said that this would be really successful and get a lot of readers if the main story is interesting and relevant.
Lastly they commented on layout 4 and said that they are intrigued to see what the newspaper would look like with a full masthead taking up the whole top section of the front cover.
First Page:
All of the students in my focus group decided that layout 2 is the most successful page layout as it is set out in an organised fashion. The contents, contact information, lottery numbers and the weather taking up the top third of the page. The story and image linking to the story is in the centre of the page and across the bottom of the page is the advertisement. The people in the focus group said that this looks really successful as it is very organised and easy to navigate and spot where each section is on the page. They commented that it looks much more successful than other newspapers where their layout isn't set out in a specific way and everything is cluttered and is hard to navigate and find what you want to look at.

Fonts
I discussed the fonts I have researched and and the top 10 fonts used in newspapers. The feedback I received from the focus group was to not use any of these fonts as my masthead as they are much too simple and wouldn't make my newspaper stand out from the rest of the local newspapers. They stated that I should look at different websites to get more of an insight into more interesting, bold and original fonts for my masthead.
They all preferred the more modern, rounded fonts for my contents and headlines than the traditional fonts as the modern fonts relate more to the younger generation and will work well with the style and target audience of my newspaper.

Colours
After discussing with the students in the focus group that I want to challenge the codes and conventions of colour and I want my newspaper to be unique, they decided that that would be a really successful thing to do if the right colours are chosen as it would make the newspaper stand out from the rest of the local newspapers. I showed them the colour wheel as it shows a lot of different colours and shades of colours that could work well for my newspaper.
They discussed that they think that the bottom half of the colours on the colour wheel would be successful colours to use as they are not too masculine or feminine and are not biased towards a specific gender. They decided that purple, blue, green, red, and orange could be good colours to use but they would like to see the final fonts, stories and layouts to see what colours would work best with them.