Friday, 27 February 2015

Construction Schedule

Construction Schedule

Week 1-2: Front cover construction
Week 3-4: Contents page construction
Week 5-6: Feature article construction

Week 7: Final changes

Overall Ideas Statement

Overall Ideas Statement


The type of magazine I intend to make is a hip-hop and skateboarding magazine. I have chosen this because this is an area that I’m in to, I know a lot about the music, culture and lifestyle. I have a lot of friends that are also into this area which will help me construct the magazine. I have used magazines such as XXL and Thrasher Magazine for inspiration and aim to make a crossover of the two. Specifically there aren’t many, if any skating and hip-hop magazines. Because of this I feel that this is a new original product, tailored at a young male audience that is slightly rebellious and could be a successful product. 

Fonts and Colours Moodboard Analysis

Fonts and Colours Moodboard Analysis
                       

I have chosen the colour and fonts accordingly to my target audience, young males that are slightly rebellious. To fit that audience I have used aggressive, masculine fonts that you won’t see on magazines such as Q and NME, as opposed to conventional neater fonts seen on some magazines that can be classed as more feminine such as Vogue. I have seen this done on other magazines such as Thrasher magazine so I know that this will work. My magazine doesn’t need to conform to the simplistic styles as NME as it doesn’t have to appeal to the masses; it’s stylised and has a specific target audience. I have chosen bold strong colours, instead of soft pastille colours. Being as my targeted audience is slightly rebellious, challenging traditional conventions will appeal to them more than a magazine such as Empire magazine.

Thursday, 26 February 2015

Target Audience Moodboard Analysis

Target Audience Moodboard Analysis


Overall, if you look at my moodboard you will be able to tell that that is targeted at a young male audience that is slightly rebellious. Certain images such as the Nike, Thrasher and Instagram logos will tell you this. I have picked Supreme to be on my moodboard because Supreme is a clothing label that is marketed towards predominantly a young male audience, consisting mainly of skaters and hip-hop fans and is one of the biggest brands for this target audience. Social networking logos such as Twitter and Instagram have been put on to signify that it is for a younger audience as these are recognisable logos and the audience are up to speed with modern technologies. I have chosen to put Mac Miller’s Watching Movies With the Sound Off album cover on because this is the music that my specific audience will listen to.

Advertising Moodboard Analysis

Advertising Moodboard Analysis


Overall, if you look at my moodboard you will be able to tell that it is targeted at a young rebellious male audience. Brands and logos such as Nike SB, Vine and Fanta connote this. I have picked Domino’s Pizza because being a young audience, they’re probably going to eat a lot of pizza. I have picked HUF as one of my advertisers because HUF is one of the biggest skating street wear brands and the target audience is likely to wear HUF clothing. I have picked Netflix because the audience are likely to spend a lot of their time watching TV shows and films on Netflix. I have picked Soundcloud because this is a likely platform that readers are going to use to stream music without having to pay. I have picked the social network Vine because younger audiences are more likely to have Vine accounts.

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Overview of the Magazine Industry

Overview of the magazine industry

In Britain alone there are over 8000 titles published which can be categorised into the following: Consumer (general and specialist) these are sold in newsagents and available online, business/trade/professional – for people at work, customer magazines that organisations distribute amongst their customers as a marketing strategy, staff magazines which inform staff about their company, newspaper supplements given out free as part of a daily or Sunday paper, academic journals for university-level discussion of all sorts of arcane topics and part works – a set number of issues building up into an encyclopaedia on a specific topic.
Consumer magazines make up the most part of sales in newsagents. They can be either general titles that aim to entertain and inform such as Loaded, Elle, Radio Times or consumer specialist titles aimed at specific interests or hobbies i.e. Car, Total Film, Gardener’s World.

The biggest consumer magazine publishers are: Bauer, Time Warner, BBC and Hearst. In 2014 there are over 3,200 different consumer titles, compared to 1980 when there were only 1,383 – this is more than half the amount of what there is today. 1.4 billion magazines are sold each year, compared to 2.1 billion in 1970 and 1.2 billion in 1992. 85% of the population reads a magazine, advertises spent £745 million in magazines in 2008, consumers spend £2 billion on magazines annually, an average of 500 new magazines have been launched every year in the past decade and only 3 in 10 titles survive for more than 4 years.

Information on Magazine Publishers

Information on Magazine Publishers

IPC Media
With over 85 iconic media brands, IPC Media (now known as Time Inc. UK) creates content for a wide variety of audiences for multiple media platforms. IPC Media goes across print, online, mobile and tablets; this ensures IPC is accessible by anybody of any age across any media product.  New Musical Express (better known as its abbreviation NME) is one of IPC Media’s most established and acknowledged publications having been around since 1952 (although IPC haven’t always had the rights to the publication) along with “Marie Clare” which is the other most popular and most regularly purchased aiming towards a more niche target audience. IPC Media (The International Publishing Corporation) was formed in 1963. IPC focuses on three main audiences: men, mass market women and upmarket women.
IPC Media’s wide spectrum of magazines covers all genres such as; women’s magazines, men’s magazines, home and garden, sports and music. IPC Media for the most part produce magazines fit for women and appeal to them most with a variety of magazines for the female target audience such as “woman”, “woman&home” “woman special series”, “woman’s own” and “woman’s own lifestyle specials”. On the other hand, IPC Media offer a range of other magazine genres such as sports with publications such as; “world soccer”, “cycling fitness” and “golf monthly” and “yachting monthly”, predominantly aimed towards the male target audience and inferring the target audience is wealthy as one of the key ideologies suggesting they are interesting in boats, yachts and may be in a financial position to afford to own a boat.

Bauer
Bauer Media is part of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately owned publishing group. Bauer is a worldwide media empire which offers over 300 publications in 15 countries. Bauer is a multi-media platform with an offering of online and print publications, TV and radio stations. Bauer Media joined the Bauer Media Group in January 2008 following attainment of Emap PLC’s consumer and specialist magazines, online, TV, radio and digital businesses. Cooperatively, the group employs 6,400 people.
Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK-based media group consisting of many off shooting companies focusing on two main media platforms, print magazines and radio. Currently, Bauer Media, widely acclaimed as industry innovators, has over 80 influential brand names ranging varyingly from Heat, MATCH!, CAR and Parkers.
Bauer Media publish a vast range of different magazines, as a result managing to provide for numerous diverse target audiences ranging from men to women, to teenagers. Bauer Media’s women’s collection covers a comprehensive choice of interests entailing such items as celebrities, lifestyle, health and fashion. This would include magazines such as heat, which distributes “MUST READ” celebrity news and gossip, as well as real life news. Other magazines targeted directly towards women are more fashion based GRAZIA and Closer. Bauer Media are among forerunners in music and entertainment with titles such as Kerrang, Q and Mojo. Q connects the music and lifestyle audience, Mojo focuses on “timeless music”, whereas Kerrang branch to the rock and metal genre. Entertainment wise for a younger audience is Empire, the movie magazine with record breaking covers.

Conde Nast
Conde Nast, founded in 1909, is a global multi-platform media company that produces high quality magazines, websites and digital content. Conde Nast’s target audience is predominantly high class adults, usually women due to the high quality magazines published. Because of the quality they have a tendency to be more expensive than average magazines picked up by the working class, thus making them unlikely to be affordable to the working class. Conde Nast do not publish magazines aimed at lower class target audiences as they are a high end company.
With 263 million consumers in 30 different markets, the company’s magazines include some of the worlds most respected and high class magazines such as GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Architectural Digest and Vogue to name a few. As well as the 143 magazines and 130 websites published, the company expands out to restaurants, education, film, television and premium video programming. The company even has “Conde Nast Entertainment” as of 2011, which develops film, television and digital video programming. Conde Nast also delves into the fashion industry owning FFM (Fairchild Fashion Media) which publishes titles such as WWD, M, Beauty Inc. and website Style.com.

There are around 1000-5000 employees in Conde Nast to date, with its headquarters situated in the world trade center in New York. Like many other publishers, Conde Nast have their own website. This aids attracting a larger audience due to its wide accessibility on many different platforms and furthers the promotion of their magazines and sponsors.

Colour Moodboard


Target Audience Moodboard


Tuesday, 10 February 2015

College Questionnaire Analysis

College Questionnaire Analysis

From the results of our questionnaire we underwent I found out that 60% taking part in the questionnaire were females and 40% were male. 100% of people asked did not read the current college magazine, this clearly shows that the current product doesn’t reach its target audience. 50% want it for free, whereas the rest were willing to pay inbetween 50p and £1. Because of these results, I am going to test out selling the magazine for 50p. In terms of how often the magazine should be published, 45% of students said they would like it monthly, with the other 40% opting for an even split of either fortnightly or every half term. With these results, I am going to be releasing the magazine monthly.

We asked what students would like to see in the magazine, the most popular choices were film, music, events and competitions. Fashion, technology and sport were also popular. Going by these results, the magazine will include film, music, events and competitions on a regular basis. When asked what colours they would like to see on the cover of the magazine, people most frequently chose red, blue, green, black and white. Because of these results I am going to try out black, white and red as the main colours featured on the cover. Students said that the things they would like to see come with the magazine most are vouchers for things such as clothing and food, therefore I am going to throw in a few vouchers for outlets such as Subway and Top shop. 

Audience Research College Magazine Questionnaire



EarlWolf CD Cover


CD Cover Analysis


Real College Magazine Analysis