New Scientist Magazine

Illustrations
I bought a copy of New Scientist to see how they lay things out and what kind of styles their illustrations were in. Unfortunately there weren't many illustrations at all apart from the small squares but I decided to take a look at them anyway as the brief states that I have to "Design the editorial image to fit one page of the magazine (using the proper format)".
This means that for the final thing I would have to print out my illustration alongside a caption (which could be placed anywhere on the page) and with the right dimensions to fit into the magazine. 

Front cover

Conclusion:
New Scientist doesn't feature many - if at all - illustrations in their articles, only those cartoons on their regular "Opinion Letters" which is a bit difficult for me as I wanted to produce something that would fit perfectly within the magazine.
Although I could still figure out how these cartoons are laid out; they are normally within a little square and don't blend into the background of the paper. A minimum amount of shading is used as well as detail and this is probably due to their small size.


Layouts
Because of the lack of illustrations I began to look at the layouts of the main articles and how they place imagery alongside text.

Conclusion:
Even in the main article the text is the main focus point. So I take another look at the brief to see whether or not I would have to do any text.

"Design the editorial image to fit one page of the magazine (using the proper format).

You should also include on the page in any way you feel is appropriate a small label that details the name of the sitter and no more than 20 words describing them."

So surely this means I would only need to print out the illustration at the correct size alongside a 20-word label? If so, then I really would only need to know the dimensions of the pages.


Update 22.03.13
Fortunately one of my lecturers had an issue with an interesting illustration in it as well as an interesting layout:

So I think I might just lay out my illustration as they had done on the page on the left!


Dimensions
Because I have to design it in the right format I measured the magazine. And it's:

26.7cm (height) x 20.1cm (width)


Overall Conclusion:
I think that by looking at New Scientist I was able to learn what kind of illustrations they had (well, the lack of illustrations they had) but I was also able to figure out the target market. This should, hopefully, help me out when it comes to figuring out what illustration to use!