First Print Out -- Main Article

I printed out my main article in order to look at my layout on paper so I can look at the sizes of the text as well as where I plan on having the main body of the article and images. I'm going to use the annotations on the page as a guide when I next work on my article.

Good Weekend -- Magazine Layout Analysis

My magazine has been heavily influenced by Good Weekend magazine. I like the concepts and layouts for their covers and I like the layouts for their articles (like the one above). I like the section folio (which I've adopted for my magazine) and the way the text has been layered on top of the picture which makes it easier to read.

Esquire -- Theory of Magazine Layout

I was given a task to look in detail into the different features of a magazines front cover and to then look at the connotations of the features - I chose to look at an issue of Esquire.

Layout Development No.1 -- Main Article

Good Weekend -- Masthead & Cover Analysis

I really like the simplicity of the Good Weekend covers, there's usually one feature colour and either a black or white colour for the text on the page and this make the cover look sleek and quite cool. They layout is good as the cover lines are nicely spaced out, making them easier to read. The covers have one main image and this gives the consumer/reader a point to focus on, it also acts as an advertising strategy.

I love the design of the Good Weekend magazine masthead as it changes it's placement and design for each issue, however it still keeps it's basic structure. I plan on adopting this structure for my magazines masthead South Eastern.

Mood Board No.4 -- Masthead

I currently trying to figure out how I want my masthead to appear on my front cover. My main decision I need to make is whether I want the name of my magazine to appear as South Eastern or SE. I'm finding it hard to decide how I want it to appear because the masthead says a lot about the magazine, this means I have to consider each aspect of the masthead such as font and colour. For example, if the masthead is bright pink, it connotes femininity and girliness. Plus, it fits in with the conventions of a magazines targeted at females of all ages (i.e. Cosmopolitan magazine: targeted at women, Seventeen magazine: targeted at teenage girls and Elle girl magazine: targeted at teenage girls).

Construction -- Main Article

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to be conducting multiple interviews for my article and in order to do so I'm going to need some good questions. I want effective leading questions that are going to generate great answers so I have enough to condense into a great article. I've already started to write up some questions that I'd like to ask, such as the following:

• What kind of encouragement did you receive from your teachers in secondary school and further education, in regards to higher education?
• Did the ethnicity of your teachers play a part in your decisions?
• Tell me something about the ethnic make up of your course. 
• What about the ethnic make up of your lecturers?

Mood Board No.3 -- Double Spreads & Interviews

For this mood board I've used images of double spreads/interviews/articles that I like because of their different attributes (especially the layouts that incorporate different images).

Hoodies, Louts, Scum -- Critical Analysis Of The Representation Of Youth In The News

  In summary, Garner's article in The Independent newspaper addresses the fact that young people are negatively represented in all news platforms/outlets, and that there are only two main situations in which young people don't receive bad press: in the event of a young persons early demise or in the event that a young person displays some kind of talent in television shows such as The X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent.

  Garner provides figures that show that the words most commonly used to describe teenage boys in most articles about them are the words "yobs", "thugs", "sick" and "feral". The use of such terms promote Acland's (1995) Ideology of Protection theory as this negative representation of young males (which essentially dictates the collective identity of young people) feeds into the hegemonic idea that young people are delinquents who need to be "monitored" and "controlled". For instance, after viewing the film Eden Lake and seeing how the young people in the film behaved, you could argue that the young people were feral, nasty and dangerous and that they needed monitoring. However, Eden Lake only provides one representation of young people and that representation can't possibly make up the collective identity of all young people but such representations tend to be the only ideas that contribute towards hegemony - which according to research found (in regards to teenage boys and the news) is taking it's toll.

Read the article here.