First Magazine Layout Design

This is a first plan of a conflict magazine. I have decided to focus on the protests and riots which have rocked the world from Egypt to Libya to London to Dublin in the last two years. This double-page spread is focused on the London riots of August 2011. This piece was surprisingly simple to make. I found a picture which I knew on the internet of a Polish woman jumping out of her window; the building below was on fire and she leapt to safety. The shot is a wonderful one of her silhouetted against the fiery blaze as the emergency services reach up to save her. Once I had it the size I wanted (I didn't want to cut too much of the black off and lose the contrast between dark and light), I placed white writing in the blackness at the bottom left. I was following this magazine layout from Vogue.

The words read 'what do you think we wanted from this'. I chose these words because I believe the riots get a lot of bad press. In fact, they started out as a peaceful protest and the influence of negative outside factors (chavs) negated it into the looting and smashing that it turned into. I can't even blame those people very much. The world we live in today listens to the voice of the people, apparently, but the downtrodden and the given-up-on and the lost causes? No one listens to them. No one in government listens to people who want more jobs, who want more pay, who want better education, who want change which is impossible, because they are all power-greedy blind toads. There is no way to change this country because all politicians are corrupt. They care more about international relations than changing things in their own country. There is no way to change but we wish it was so, because everyone has a voice; but no one hears everyone's. No one agrees with me on the way I see this, but I don't care. I like to make art about it to try and force people to see how unfair it is. This was a very simple but very effective poster and I like it a lot. I wouldn't change anything, I think it has plenty of impact as it is.