ABBIE SINGLETON MEDIA NEA YEAR 2

  The satirical British Private Eye, founded in 1961, is a fortnightly current affairs magazine. Despite the conventional white background throughout the webpage, coloured backgrounds are scattered throughout, such as a pale purple, which helps the audience to establish differences in the content. The prominent colour scheme consists of black, white, red, and blue, however, the site also uses minor amounts of greys, greens, and purples. The logo, presented in all black, is quite large, and placed on the left side of the screen. At the very top of the screen is a piece of the brand’s art style, demonstrating their unique selling point and brand identity. Social media links are presented in line with the logo, but they are not as big. Underneath the logo and social media links is the navigation bar, which doesn’t include a ‘search’ feature, but does include an ‘about’ link. The website includes moving features, which I have not come across in other sites – this adds a sense of youth ...

  The Spectator is a British current affairs magazine, first published in 1828 and distributed weekly. The Spectator website, alongside the standard use of white and black, uses red repeatedly throughout its layout, maintaining an impression of brand identity  as it is the colour of the masthead. There are occasional uses of green, which both compliments and contrasts against the red hues, bringing forth attention and establishing a clear divide between topics. Yellow and blue hues are also used in some areas, such as the horizontal subscription bar; these extra colours in small amounts ensures the website does not appear overcrowded with colour. The website uses two fonts; however, one is used more frequently than the other. A serif font – very similar to that of the brand logo – is used throughout the website, such as for article titles, names, etc., and a sans-serif font is used only for the actual article text - this difference in font helps to distinguish the st...

Vanity Fair, revived in the United States in 1983,  is a current affairs magazine that targets a white, female, middle-upper class audience, of an average age of 45. Despite the middle-aged demographic, the magazine and website presents itself in a modern fashion, using a black background; this appears rather unconventional for a current affairs website, as most tend to use a plain, white background. The Vanity Fair logo is rather small, and located in the top left corner, rather than a header across the whole top of the screen, indicating their faith in their audiences' interests. The rest of the header/navigation bar features links to its sub-websites, a place to sign in, and a link to making a subscription. The lack of features such as ‘about’ suggests that the company are aware of their importance and status, and that their audience is already educated on who they are and how they represent themselves. The colour scheme is comprised of black, white, and blue, with an added touc...

  For Private Eye magazine, the masthead is presented in a black, sans-serif font in block capitals, making it easy for the audience to spot and consume. The font style is rather linear and sharp, suggesting the content of the magazine is straight to the point.  The colour scheme of the cover is made up of red, black, yellow and blue, however, the blue and yellow are only included in the main image and graphics, rather than text such as the cover lines.  The sans-serif font persists throughout the cover, yet a serif font appears in both the comical speech bubbles and the dateline. The change in font from sans-serif to serif may be used to tone down the satirical tone presented in the speech bubbles, suggesting that the text included inside them is not completely comical, and has some truth to it. The main image also includes the red, white, blue, and yellow colour scheme, and features a medium shot of Donald Trump mid-speech.  The supporting graphics of fireworks rel...

  The masthead ‘New Statesman’ is presented in two shades of red, in a serif font located in the top third of the cover. The brightness of the red in ‘New’ attracts the readers eye, leading them to the ‘Enlightened thinking in dark times’ selling line directly underneath.  The cover sticks to a simple colour palette consisting of red and black, which are conventional print features, specifically newspapers. Due to the current affairs classification of this magazine, the cover is likely to mimic newspaper conventions in order to attract its audience, as the content is likely to be similar.  Only two fonts are used, as the main cover line and the cover lines in the skyline are a thick, block capital, sans-serif font, whereas the masthead and cover line underneath the main cover line are a serif font. The main image is arguably the close-up, black and white shot of Boris Johnson located in the bottom right corner of the cover. The strips of images, also black and white, alon...

  The masthead ‘Prospect’, located in the top third of the cover, is presented in a black, serif font. The serif and slight sophistication of the ‘ct’ in the masthead suggests that the magazine targets a more sophisticated and educated audience, as it is not as easy to read as sans-serif font.  The colour scheme consists of simply three colours: black, red, and yellow. The hint of yellow against the block red background mimics the Chinese flag, which connects to the main image.  The cover features three serif fonts, and as the eye travels down the cover, the font gets smaller in size, drawing the reader in.  The main image features close-up shots of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, both powerful political figures. Whilst Xi Jinping is facing forwards, Donald Trump is positioned sideways, which emphasizes the emotionless, yet negative, look on his face. The image is in black and white, which is not too unconventional for magazines. There are no supporting images. Cover li...