font mood board/analysis

Original idea statement

The type of magazine I am going to make is aimed at a more indie/grunge background. The type of images I will use will be in black and white. My target audience is young adults who have an interest in indie, alternative and grunge bands. It will be focused on music, tours and interviews with bands as I don’t think anything else will tie in with what my magazine is about. I have chosen this type of magazine as I am a strong supporter and follower of the alternative genre, this makes it easier for me to find bands to put in my magazine and I can understand what the people who read my magazine would like. I will use a range of dark colours as this will link with my theme. The lists of bands that I may include Nirvana, The 1975 and many more which were influenced by these bands.

Advertisers mood board

Target audience mood board

Front cover and contents page analysis

Questionnaire Results

Information on magazine publishers

Magazine Company Research 

I shall be researching the companies which own large magazines and certain figures which could affect them.

IPC Media 

IPC Media or now known as TimeInc UK, is a massive company which owns at least 90 magazines. These magazines consist of NME, InStyle, NOW Aand TV Times. A lot of these are woman magazines or TV magazines, this is because they could make a lot of money out of it as woman are stereo typically more likely to buy magazines. To be completely precise, they publish 90 magazines all aimed at different audiences. Time Inc sell around 350 million copies every year, this is either digital or physical as they aim at both targets. The owner and CEO, Marcus Rich created the company in 1968 and was also owned by Time Warner from 1990 – 2014. Bauer Bauer is a UK company which produces over 107 brands. Some of these are Kerrang! Absolute Radio and more.

Bauer 

Bauer seems to be focused on music as over half of its magazines are on music, however they do have some entertainment magazines on offer to. Bauer reaches over 22 million unique people. They have never released stats on how much they own on the market, however it seems to be a large number as they have a lot of magazines. The owner of the company is Yvonne Bauer. She created, published and is the owner of the media group

BBC Magazines 

BBC Magazines is a UK company which produces 20 magazines. These magazines are mostly based over their shows like Doctor Who and more. However, a lot of them are wildlife or cooking magazines, this shows us that the target audience for the magazines is the older generation. BBC Magazines don’t own a lot of the market as they are more based on TV which they own practically all the market. They are actually owned by another company called Exponent Private Equity. They are also published by Immediate. A lot of their magazines have been discontinued or cancelled as no one would read them, proving that BBC magazines are not a huge predator in the magazine network.

Questionnaire Results

In our surveys, we asked our consumers (people at college) what they would want in the college magazine. Our answers came out from simple to very broad.

Our first question was how many people read it, we found out that 90% did not read it, however 10% did. This means the magazine is not reaching the target audience. Our second test was to see what colours people liked. Our top 5 colours were black, blue, red, green and white. Some of these colours contrast so we wouldn’t use them all. We then asked when to publish it, most people (30%) said monthly or termly. However, personally I believe these are too long and would use fortnightly (20%) as it is a much shorter timescale. People would also not be willing to pay with about 40% of people say they wouldn’t pay, however 48% of people said that they would pay. 20% of these said they would pay 50p. We asked people what they would like in the magazine and the results came in as: music, fashion, food, revision, competitions. The highest scorer was music, this would be a main topic in our magazine. We then asked people if free stuff would entice them to buy it, 95% said yes. What images should be shown is another question we asked and over 70% of people wanted student work or a picture of a student/students on the front cover. We also asked if we should make it multi-platform, most people wanted this as 80% of people said that they would want this, however obviously 20% of people would not want this. Advertisements would also be a huge part in our magazine, and we asked people if they would like this. 75% of people said it would interest them to see adverts in the magazine. Finally, we had to ask where we should distribute the magazine. The main answers we got were the reception and the coffee shop. We believe that these are good places as most people go in there every day. To conclude, the answers we were given shaped our magazine and we could implement these into the design process of what we intend to make J

College magazine analysis

College magazine pre task