When you look at the mastheads on the front of The Sunday Times and The Sun you can start to spot great differences. The Times is written in a gothic font. The font is serif more traditional, more upmarket, more conservative it makes the paper look older less exciting but keeping to the usual standard of papers. The Times also has a crest, this gives the paper a more upmarket and distinctive look. As well as The Sunday Times, being bigger than The Sun, this puts across the point that The Times is for the business man and that it is for, grander people because The Sun is dwarfed by it. The crest if you look carefully is written in French, not Latin because the French language is supposed to be sophisticated and when The Sunday Times was first published, only the cleverest people would be able to speak another language, this defines that this paper was for the upper classes. On the other hand The Times’ masthead is smaller than The Suns. The Suns masthead is designed, to be eye-catching it is big, bright and bold. It takes up a fifth of The Suns front page, and the writing is white on a red background so it stands out to the buyer. It is red a colour which is associated with labour because The Sun is a more labour influenced paper. The Sunday Times is the complete opposite it is conservative which means you get a lot of differences between the two. The Suns masthead is sans serif it is the opposite of serif. This style is younger more rebellious it brakes the rules it is no longer formal and plain, it is a simpler font so that it is easier for a more illiterate audience to read. The Times has a royal crest, which makes it classier, more formal and appeals to a more upmarket audience. The Sun has a big red masthead this makes it eye-catching to a passing buyer. You can see even from the mastheads that these papers are aimed at two totally different audiences. The Sun is aimed at a much more general audience than The Sunday Times. The Sun is cheaper more pocket friendly it can easily be rolled up and put in your pocket The Times is big and bulky it really needs a briefcase to carry it. So it is aimed at a more business class audience. The price differs because of content and because The Sun is aimed at a wider audience, (it is the most popular paper in England) so it can afford to be cheaper. The Sunday Times is aimed at a narrower market so it needs to be more expensive for it to make enough money. You can start to see differences in the paper, just by looking at the mastheads and front pages!
When you start to read the rest of the paper you begin to feel that these papers are in two different classes. The Sunday Times’ headlines are tiny compared to The Suns. The Times has two pictures that are both used to help explain in great detail the event that is being reported. The Suns front page is just one big bright eye-catching picture, the reader to the paper and makes him wan to read on. The Sun has very catchy slang headlines but they make you think when you read them. The Sunday Times’ front page has more writing than The Suns front page. Even the normal type The Sun uses is twice as big as The Times’. There are more pictures in The Sun because it is a more sensational paper, The Times has only a few pictures because they paint pictures in your mind with the words that they use. The Sun often uses slang, catchy headlines and exaggerates when they think more people will buy the paper. The Times is very formal and straight, in the opening headline or paragraph of each article, it always tells you straight away what its about, but The Sun tends to play on words an stimulate the readers mind because each paper is different and tries to produce a different effect, on the reader. Comparing Font, format layout, pictures and headlines we start to see more differences in these two papers.
Then we move on to the rest of the paper