Thumbnails And Design

In terms of the layout of my magazine, I have designed some thumbnail images to experiment with different design set ups to see what works best when I come to hand rendering some larger thumbnails and making design outlines on InDesign. These small thumbnails show layout designs for the front cover, inside spread for my main article and the contents page.

As another step forwards to making my layout designs closer to how the final product may look, I used InDesign to create some blockout thumbnails. Using the small hand drawn thumbnails, I created similar layouts by creating columns of placeholder text and blocks that represent the titles, images and block quotes.

Blue- Titles

Pink- Images

Green- Block quotes

Here are my hand rendered designs for my cover, contents and spreads with notes on how I intend to develop each ones, these are just a guide to help with the layout style.

Broadening The Mind Map

With 'Young persons political article' at the centre of my mind map. I was able to expand and gain a large collection of creative words that I previously wouldn't have linked to my political magazine. I was able to suggest draft ideas that could be used as a basis for a less generic article in my magazine that aims to change young peoples views on politics and make them interested.

I came up with the idea 'Rising Stars of Politics'. This article has the potential to be a weekly feature in the magazine, each week there would be information about a young person who is becoming involved in politics, whether they're a young MP or just someone who is opening and expressing their views on what could be done to improve the future of politics. But it could also be a larger one off article that informs about multiple young politics from different parties and backgrounds. The article would contain basic information about the young person eg. their name, age, where they're from and their current state of education/employment. After a brief background is given to introduce the young person, it would go on to talk about the young persons involvements and interest in politics with a possible interview or quotes from the young person themselves. Having quotes and interviews makes an article more engaging as you get the unaltered views of the subject of the article.

In terms of layout, the article would be on just one page as a feature that introduces multiple young politicians over a series of weeks, rather than bombarding the reader with information about one person in particular. The article would start with a fact file to introduce the young politician in a easy to read and non complex style. The rest of the article explaining what the young politician does in more detail would follow in columns, interrupted by block quotes to attract attention and give the audience interesting information. I would like to include an image of the young politician and if possible, a picture of them in action/working to show the contents of the article in an image form.

Here are some draft name ideas outlined using words from my mind map.

Beginning To Mind Map

As my magazine is primarily going to be aimed at teenage females with the aim of encouraging them to vote. After mind mapping some ideas and concepts about the aims of my magazine I decided I would like to include an article about the Suffragettes and the right for females to vote. Points I would focus on are:

• Who were the Suffragettes?
• Why weren't females eligible to vote?
• What did the Suffragettes do?
• When did females get the right to vote?
• Key personalities in the Suffragette movement.
• Why it's important for females to use their opportunity to vote.

Here are some images that would work well with the topic of the article as well as the style of my magazine:

As some of my magazine will be in an arty, scrapbook style I think these images would compliment the design because of their vintage look. The images are strong and biased towards making females look good which I hope will encourage teenage girls today that they too can have the same power as the Suffragettes did.

Recreating A Layout

What I knew?
I knew that print publications like magazines had a bleed because industrial printers that print out large amounts of magazines at a fast pace aren't able to be exactly accurate. The bleed means that the ink printed is slightly larger than the paper itself so that the colour or picture goes right to the edge of the publications. 
I was aware that an affective convention of magazine layout is to put interesting or intriguing information as a large pull quote as the readers eye will naturally be drawn to this part of the document, making them want to keep on reading.

What was the task?
As a task, the challenge was to choose a double page spread from a magazine and copy it as identically as possible using InDesign. I chose a double page spread on The Dark Knight Rises that has a combination of large titles, shapes, columns of text and a large image that is printed between both of the pages.

What do I know now?
To be able to recreate the magazine spread I had to use tools I hadn't previously used in InDesign. Usually when using InDesign I work on a single page document but this time the canvas was different with a line down the middle showing the two sides of the double page spread. 
When setting up the canvas I used the bleed option for the first time so that if the document was to be printed the images would go right to the edge of the page and look just how the original magazine looked. I learnt how to create separate columns for text as I had to create 4 columns, 2 smaller and 2 larger, for the text. I used place holder text to fill the columns and used the red cross button to drag the place holder text so that it was feed through to the next column.
So that everything was placed correctly I made different layers for each part of the document eg. background, title, body text, images. This meant that when I used the polygon tool to create my arrow shapes I was able to put them in a layer behind the text so it would be neat and the same as the original publication.
To make the arrows I had to use the polygon tool as my way of drawing. As the polygon tool only allows you to draw simple, basic shapes I had to draw a triangle and put them together. So InDesign would treat the two seperate shapes as one I learnt the shortcut Cmd+G to group the shapes so any adjustments I made would be made to both of the shapes.

Image Size And Resolution

These images above of a duck are 2 inches in size but their resolution in pixels per inch have been decreased. The lower the PPI, the less pixels make up the image, therefore making it look less clear and crisp.

An image of the Suffragettes is relative to my political multipage document as my target audience will be young females. The screen size of the image is 620x591 pixels.

Physical screen size in inches

620/72=8.6 inches

591/72= 8.2 inches

Physical print size in inches

20/300= 2.07 inches

591/300= 1.97 inches

Physical print size in centimetres

2.07*2.54=5.26cm

1.97*1272.54=5.00cm

Physical print size in millimetres

5.26*10=52.6mm

5.00*10=50mm

Now I know how to convert an image from it's screen size to it's print size, I need to know how to convert an image from it's print publication size to it's physical screen size and to do this, you must do the process above in reverse.

This is picture of Andrew Garfield as Spider Man from Empire magazine.

Physical print size in millimetres 

127x157mm

Physical print size in centimetres

127/10=12.7cm

157/10=15.7cm

Physical print size in inches 

12.7/2.54=5.00 inches

15.7/2.54=6.18 inches

Pixel dimensions in inches

5.00*300=1500 inches

6.18*300=1854 inches

Physical screen size in inches

1500*72=108,000 inches

1854*72=133,488 inches

Magazine Focus Group

As part of my research to discover the best way to design a political document aimed towards young people, I held a focus group with five people in the class to compare a political magazine with a popular magazine aimed at young people.

I showed them the cover and examples of articles from Company Magazine and Total Politics Magazine along with a list of talking points, those were:

• Target audience
• Layout
• Texts/fonts
• Images
• Image/text balance
• Colours
• Tone
• Is it appealing
• What would you change
• Best features
• Which do you prefer

I also asked whether the group thought the modern, fun design of Company magazine would work as a design for a political document aimed at teenagers.

Overall, the group preferred Company magazine as they liked it's modern layout that was clear aimed at young people. They liked the colours and images used and the fact that they weren't too bold and over the top kept the tone of the magazine mature. One of the main points of Company magazine that stood out was their '#readitandtweet' feature. The group thought that a feature like this would be a point of interest in a political document aimed towards young people as almost all teenagers spend most of their time on social media and it would be a fun way to keep up to date with politics.

Total Politics magazine was very unpopular with the group because of the general tone and layout. It was described as looking like a newspaper that was far too text heavy and the small, boring images didn't break the text or add a point of interest to the articles. Total Politics magazine is an example of the typically boring information that is accessible if you want to find out more about politics, it doesn't appear to a young audience and the group feel as though continuing to produce magazines like this won't help engage young people in politics. 

Magazine Layout Textual Analysis

Marie Claire is a popular women's magazine that focuses on fashion, celebrities and lifestyle. I have decided to aim my political multipage document towards young females so by looking at the features of magazines in general that are aimed at females will help me to discover what the female audience are attracted to. 

The headline is written in the trademark Marie Claire font so that regular readers will automatically notice it on a shop shelf and also non regular readers will recognise the repeated style which may intrigue them to purchase and read the magazine. The headline is pink which matches the colour scheme of this months issue of the magazine, the colour scheme will change to compliment the cover image and in this case the pink text used ties in with Pixie Lott's pink toned make-up which is visually pleasing as the text and image compliment each other to look professional and neat. Pink is the stereotypical colour which is used to target a female audience and the use of pink almost automatically suggest that the audience of the document is strictly just female. As my document is primarily going to be aimed at females but most of the information will also be relevant to males I don't want my main colour scheme to be pink but I would consider experimenting with a purple colour scheme.

Buzzwords 'Best' and 'Life Changing' are used on the front cover, they are used to attract your attention to the articles inside the magazine and emphasise the interest and importance of the articles. The reader knows that the story won't be life changing but by seeing the words written down they are likely to want to discover how great the information really is. Buzzwords are very affective because they make the reader question whether what they're about to read really could be the information they've been wanting to know for a long time. The use of buzzwords makes the magazine publishers seem confident about their content so I would like to use buzzwords on the front of my political document as I think that they will be good at adding interest to a topic that is usually considered boring.

The cover line on the front of the magazine is 'Fashion Forecast' followed by a smaller strap line that reads 'Cool spring trends- plan your new look now'. When I read the cover line and it's strap line I noticed that alliteration has been used throughout, alliteration is attention grabbing and also cuts down bulky sentences as what 'Fashion Forecast' really means is 'this is what we will predict will be in fashion'. The strap line underneath also has an alliterative feel with the 'plan your NEW look NOW' continuing with the subtle alliteration keeps the strap line snappy and interesting rather than too informative. A large amount of information is unnecessary on the front cover as the aim of the front cover is to encourage the reader to want to read what is inside the magazine, so if the explanation on the front cover was too in depth then the reader may not open it up. 

The most effective style for a women's magazine is to have a large, attractive image and minimal text that is punchy and intriguing. Marie Claire's cover is appealing to a female audience firstly because of the colour scheme and secondly because of the way they tease the reader into wanting to read more about the segments advertised on the front cover. A casual, gossipy tone is used to sound friendly and inviting and although my political document is on a more serious topic than women's gossip, I think that if I create a chatty and casual tone the audience won't feel as pressured to try and take in lots of serious information. 

Statistics On Young People Voting

• The green 'Electorate' section on the chart is the amount of people eligible to vote and the red 'Turnout' is the proportion of those people who did vote. 
• The highest recorded turnout for an election was in 1910.
• The country with the highest turnout is generally Wales and the country with the lowest turnout is usually Northern Ireland.

• Since 1964 you can see there was a decline in the turnout of people aged 18-24 voting in the General Election, however in 2010 there was a significant rise in young persons turnout compared to the previous election.

• The chart above shows the turnout of young people at General elections compared to all of the older eligible voters.
• It is clear that the young voters are the minority ad especially in 1997-2010 the amount of young voters compared to the rest of the voters is considerably less.
• I think this may be linked to the fact that as the world becomes more modern and teenagers have a lot more to engage in, the thought of voting and being interested in politics is almost unconsidered. Therefore, I think it is extremely necessary to create and get involved with campaigns to encourage young people to start voting otherwise the amount of young voters will inevitably continue to decrease. 

Aliyah Dar. (03/07/2013) Elections: Turnout [online]. Availible at: www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01467.pdf.  [Accessed 02/01/2015]

Multipage Doc Questionnaire Results

Using Survey Monkey I created a questionnaire to find out what young peoples opinions on multipage documents are in order for me to take on information about how I can design my political multipage document to interest young people.

21.3% of the 14 people I gave the survey to are old enough to vote. The other 78.7% are not yet eligible to vote but are all eligible to vote. Therefore I still find their opinions on what they want to see in a multipage document helpful as in a short amount of time they will have the chance to vote, and young people should be encouraged to vote and understand voting from as young as possible so they know what to do when the time comes.

57.1% of the people I collected results from were male and the other 42.9% were female. This is a fairly even balance, enough for the results to be unbiased when discovering the most popular magazine in the sample of young people.

No one in the sample of young people read magazines daily, which is a likely result as most magazines are released weekly or monthly. Only 7.1% of the sample reads a magazine weekly and 28.6% read a magazine monthly. The fact that over quarter of the sample I asked read a magazine monthly shows that it's likely they would still be interested in engaging in a multipage document even though there is large amounts of information about anything you want to know online and on the television. Although over half of the people in the sample rarely read magazines, by looking at the results of what interests them about a multipage document, it is possible to create a document that they will be drawn to and engage in the information that the document includes.

I asked the sample what their magazine of choice is in order to choose a magazine to look at as part of a focus group. I was expecting for more than one person to like any specific magazine but my results show that everyone in the sample has a different magazine of choice. However there are similarities with the genres of the magazines. 42.6% of the sample would choose a women's gossip/fashion magazine and two people from the sample prefer music magazines. From these results, for my focus group focusing on the appeal of magazines, I will choose a popular women's magazine and a popular music magazine.

Half of the sample prefer magazines with more images than text and just under half of the sample prefer and equal balance of text and images and only 1 person prefers mostly text. To me this information tells me that my document should have lots of images but enough text to make the point of the images clear and relevant.

Just two more people in the sample prefer vibrant colour over subtle complimentary colour, so in terms of colour on my multipage document I will experiment with different designs, some with brighter colours and some where the colours are more subtle. Choosing the colour scheme may come naturally when choosing the images for the document, I think the colours used should compliment the colours in any photographs or images so nothing clashes.

Just under three quarters of the sample haven't ever seen or read a political document however over a quarter of them have. The people who haven't read one may find them uninteresting or unappealing. If a political multipage document was aimed specifically at young people they may show more interest and engagement.





As a conclusion of my questionnaire results I have decided that I would like to make a magazine aimed at females as my political document. From my results, the most popular magazines are women's magazines therefore I think women would be more likely to pick up and read a magazine. I decided against making a leaflet as people often see them as rubbish and throw them away as soon as they receive them and I decided against an online publication as most teenagers go to the internet go to the internet to escape and have fun so they would rather be on social media or watching video clips whilst online rather than reading information about politics.

Young Persons Voting Reports

In the last general election, only 44% of eligible young voters actually took their opportunity to vote, so no wonder young people are being highly encouraged to take the opportunity to vote if they have it. 

All young people should be required to vote in the first election they're eligible to vote in (IPPR cited by BBC. 2013)  The IPPR think tank may want to make it a policy that eligible voters should vote at their first legal election so that they're aware of what the process is so that they don't shy away from it or decide against voting at an older age. At least if they vote at their first legal election and feel that it wasn't right for them, they have a valid reason not to vote again rather than just being uneducated about the process. 

The Daily Mail Online (2014)say that 59% percent of teenagers won't vote in the 2015 election because they think politicians only care about celebrities, pensioners and successful business people. They also asked young people who would do the best job at running the country and the result of this question was Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party. If when asked unofficially who young people think should run the country an answer is given, then all of these young people with an opinion should vote in the election so that they're voice can be heard. If young people leave the voting to the rich and famous then they aren't taking their chance to make a change.

In the video above you can watch Tv's Rick Edwards Ted talk about how to encourage young people to vote. Previous to the talk he did research to discover what teenagers currently thought about politics and voting and from this research he discovered that most teenagers are just lacking in facts and information about parties and their policies. When Rick himself realised that he was little help to the young people when it came to informing them about where they could find out political information, he decided that he should make a change in order to increase the amount of young voters in the 2015 election.




To make a change, Rick has taken it upon himself, with some help, to create a VAA app for 2015's young voters to help them learn about parties and their policies as well as taking a survey to find out which party they should consider voting for based on which policies they agree with and support the most. (Rick Edwards 2014)

As a popular television personality with young people, this app could be a very successful break through to increase the amount of young voters as they will be able to easily access the information they may have previously spent ages scouring the web for, and the survey to give the young voters an idea about which party they should consider voting for is a very helpful extra boost.

Encouraging Young Voters

What I knew before?

I knew that to vote in the general election you have to be 18 years old or above and that you cannot turn up and vote if you haven't registered. I was also aware that there's a very small percentage of young people who actually vote because they don't care, don't know what each parties policies are or they feel as though, as a young person, their vote wouldn't be able to change the country. 

What was the task?
The college are starting a campaign to encourage young people to vote and know more about what it means to vote in an election. They will be using some of the posters that we designed as part of the campaign as using the NUS campaign to get young people to cote that have the slogans 'Your vote matters, make sure you're in' to teach young people the importance of registering to vote and 'These people want you to vote for them, this is what they're saying. 

I took a survey to find out which parties policies I appealed to the most, here are my results: 

The campaign is aiming to simplify the voting process and break it down so that young people aren't automatically put off and bored and so that they understand what their options are when it comes to making a vote. I found out some of labours policies that may interest young people, policies that they can relate to and understand easily:

• Guaranteed GP appointments within 48 hours, or the same day for the people who need it. 
• Making mental health treatment an NHS policy and to make sure that all NHS staff have mental health training. 
• Improvements to poor quality apprenticeships so that the final qualifications are more valuable.

The  http://www.labour.org.uk website is very helpful at informing about the Labour policies. They are written as simple points so they're quick to read and not over complicated. When looking at policies linked to a specific topic e.g. schools, the website gives you the option to look at policies on related topics e.g. young people. This is a really helpful feature for young people as they can get quick access to what they're interested in.

What I know now? 
I know know that you are able to register to vote from the age of 16, although you must still be 18 to got, the fact that you've registered shows the amount of young people who are interested in voting so that the parties know who their target audience are when it comes to creating future policies.
In the last general election only 44% of young people who were eligible to vote actually voted.

Citing And Referencing

What did I know before?
Before learning the rules and layout of Harvard style citing and references I was unaware of it's importance. I have always known that plagiarism and using other peoples work as your own is a crime, but I assumed that as long as their work was reworded slightly then it doesn't count as their work. So in the past I have only references when copying and pasting an amount of someone else's work to show that none of the words were my own.   

What was the task?
To learn how to cite and reference properly, I looked at three sources and two different ways of citing and referencing them. Using an online book, a physical book and a website, I took sections of each one to reference. The first form of citing was to paraphrase which is where you briefly reword someone else's work, however the views are still their own so you must give them credit. Here is my example of citing a paraphrased sentence: 

Harris (2013) thinks that mutual distrust can characterize relationships between campaign professional and academics.

The second part of the task was to go to the college library and find a book of our choice that would be useful for our task on elections and making a successful campaign. To do this we used the online library catalogue to search a keyword that would help us find a book, eBook or magazine that would contain useful information. I searched 'campaign' and found a useful book called 'Sales Promotion' that the librarian helped me locate. I read a few sections of the book and referenced a few sections, I used the quoting method and here's an example of that:

“Sales promotion, and indeed advertising and PR, communicate with one person at a time, usually the reader of a leaflet, poster, mailshot or press or TV advertisement. But they are not atomized individuals: they are people who build their understanding by means of their interactions with friends, colleagues, families and communities.” (Cummins and Mullin 2002, p.58)

After citing and referencing different sections from different sources I created a bibliography to reference and credit each separate source that I used. The bibliography is to put at the end of the work and it has it's own section.

What do I know now?
I know the correct way of referencing and citing someone else's work in terms of layout  e.g. including the surnames, date, page and any other sources that may have been cited within the text. I also now know that you must credit peoples work if you paraphrase it as it is still their work even if you alter a couple of words to make it less exact, to do this sort of citing you can either include their name and the date within your sentence or put the information in brackets at the end depending on what fits best. 

I also know the correct way of creating the bibliography, that you don't just simply write the name of the book but you have to mention specific points such as the authors name, book title, date published, edition number and the publishers name. Also, after using the library catalogue I now feel confident that I could use the library as a place of research as well as just the internet which would further my research. After these tasks I am going to be aware of which parts of my research are other peoples work and the best way to cite and reference the original source.

Focus Group- Biscuits And Posters

What did I know about Focus Groups?

I knew that a focus group meant getting a small group of people together, presenting them with a product and asking them their opinions on it, whether you give them a fixed set of questions or ask them the just speak their mind.

What was the task?

In small groups, we were given sample of two different types of cookie. Using Quicktime audio recorder, we sat around and discussed the cookies we tried referring to:

•  First impressions
•  Smell
•  Texture 
•  Taste
•  Visual impression
•  Quality and cost

After discussing the cookies for a few minutes, we discussed the pros and cons of this style of focus group compared to a written survey. 

What do I know now?

The pros of the focus groups were: the speed of response is quicker- you speak your mind straight away rather than thinking about what to write onto paper, the opinion you give is more detailed as it's less effort to speak your thoughts than to write down a long explanation, this means that your response is more honest as you don't have the time to think about altering it.

However there were some cons with this focus group. If you're sat with a group of people and someone shares their opinion then you may be influenced and agree with with people you're with rather than speaking your own mind. If the researcher has to listen to a 5 minute long piece of audio of qualitative information and pick out individual opinions rather than typing in simple qualitative research, it would be very time consuming and confusing to pick out exact opinions.

After doing the cookie focus group. I decided it would be a good idea to do a focus group to find out what people around the college think of my political poster design. I won't be asking them fixed questions but I will present them with points to refer to so that I can find out the information that will be helpful to me. These points will be as follows:

• Target audience
• Eye catching design?
• Legible text?
• Clear message?
• Encourage you to vote?
• Do you like it?
• Best place to display?

Before I do the focus group I will hand out a quick survey just so I can get the demographic of the group of people.

Ryan, Maisie and I went into the crib to do a focus group with people from around the college to find out what they thought of our political poster designs. We presented them with the talking points and the demographic questionnaire. Above, is the audio from the focus group where they discussed their opinions and below are the results of the demographic questionnaire.

There were three people in our focus group, they were all male and they were all on the Sport BTEC L3 course. The varied in age from 17-19 however they're all eligible to vote next year in the general election. The 17 year old who will be 18 in March and the 18 year old will be voting next year but the 19 year old won't be. I wouldn't have expected males on the Sport course to be very interested or educated about politics so I am not surprised that one of the boys won't be voting and I would guess that the other two that will be voting haven't really thought about what the parties have to offer, they just said that they will vote purely because it's the first time their eligible. 

Here are the posters that the focus group looked at.

Extracting Data

At the beginning of out politics project we asked people around the college some questions in the form of a questionnaire. 

Here is a link to the original questionnaire.

Everyone in the class asked as many people as they could and then we all typed our individual results into a group table to get a wide range of data to extract information from.

The majority of people access their political information online, shortly followed by a similar amount of people who don't access political information at all. These are results that I would've expected as the age demographic we asked which was people of ages between 16-25, use the internet for as much as they can rather than watching television or physically reading a news paper. The internet is the most convenient, immediate and free way to access information at any time. Also I'm not surprised that many people don't access political information at all as most teenagers probably find politics boring and feel as they wouldn't have an important influence when it comes down to making decisions for the country.

Looking at the amount of people we asked who don't access any political information at all, I am not surprised that over 40 people, which is the majority of the people we asked, don't support a political party at all. There are under 10 people who do support a political party and 1 person who can't decide whether they do or not, however this 'undecided' vote seems to me that the person doesn't support a political party because if they did they would have said yes. Again, I think that the majority of the young people don't support a party as they find it boring accessing political information, therefore they aren't well informed about a specific party to say that they definitely support one.

When looking specifically at the difference between the amount of males and females who support a party I expected there to be more of a contrast. The results are almost exactly the same in fact. I am not sure whether I expected more males or more females to support a political party but I would've expected one gender to be more interested in politics. Perhaps the results would've been different if we asked people from specific courses that we decided. For example I would expect the majority of Sport and Beauty students to not support a party but I would expect many more people on the Business or English course to support a party.

Extracting data from this table was more difficult than I expected it to be. Because the data was recorded by a whole class of people, everyone had their own method of inputing the data. Some difficulties occurred when a question with an answer that should've been a number from 1-5 'How much do you know about politics? (Rate 1-5)' was answered with "a good amount" because of badly recorded data like this, it meant that I couldn't create a able straight from the spreadsheet as it didn't recognise it as reliable data.

If we were to do a group collection of data again, extracting data at the end would be more successful if we decided at the beginning that everyone must input the data in the same way. This way, we would be able to make graphs directly front the spreadsheet which would saved time and make the information more reliable.