Component 3: Research & Planning

  Take a Break is a British women's magazine, founded in 1990 and published by H Bauer UK, with new issues released every Thursday. The magazine specialises in reader submitted "true life" stories, as well as women's health and lifestyle, puzzles and competitions, following a similar format to sister title That's Life, and rival publications such as Chat and Pick Me Up.     The homepage is of a similar style to Closer magazine, where it is very simplistic and consists of a small colour palette made up of white and red which can connote coldness and isolation (possibly from the emotional stories) as well as courage, anger and love by the use of red. The main images on the homepage are of the magazine itself with a small introduction about Take a Break and to the right are adverts to draw attention to what is being promoted. For example, EXCLUSIVE! Save an extra £15pp on your next Warner Leisure Hotels stay with Take a Break Holidays’ implies how this offer is only ...

  Closer is a British tabloid magazine, founded in 2005 and published by Bauer Consumer Media. Closer specialises in real life stories, celebrity drama and gossip, news and more. The homepage, as seen above, is very simplistic which connotes that the website is easy to navigate around. Closers title is positioned at the top, left hand corner of the web page in a serif which is easily recognisable. To the right of the title are drop downs of all the topics Closer covers within their magazine. As of now, Closer have 3 editions of their magazine and website, those also being French and American which shows their success and popularity in those countries and how wide their audience is. Along the banner is also a ‘subscribe’ drop down which may imply Closer are aiming to keep up the popularity of their magazine and consumers by allowing them to subscribe to receive a copy of the magazine weekly whether this be print, digital or both at a cost of £8.30 a month, instead of having to go ou...

  Single spread contents page: Double spread contents page:

 MAGAZINES AND ONLINE: You work for an independent media production company. You have been given the task of producing:  Front covers and contents page(s) of the first two editions of a new real-life story magazine that is being launched by Bauer. Two working pages for the website for the magazine.  The web pages must promote the new magazine to its target audience and enable fans to interact with the content.  Target audience:  A primarily 16–25 year old mass market audience that expects to be emotionally engaged. The two editions of a new real-lives magazine must be suitable for retail distribution. Contents pages can be either single- or double-page spread. Two working website pages for the new magazine are the homepage and one linked page. There must be a clear sense of branding across the two elements of the cross-media production. Clear sense of branding between the magazines and the website.

  I created a questionnaire on Google Forms titled 'Magazine Research' and sent it off to friends and others to complete. Above are the results displayed in a tally chart to show which initial magazine name was the most popular. Being the most popular out of the 3 names and having beaten 'Keep Up' and 'Be Real' by one vote, the final and chosen name for my real life story magazine will be 'UP2DATE'. Above are some of the responses behind the reasons as to why people liked 'UP2DATE' the most.

  My typical readers are teenagers and young adults in their early 20's who have an interest in real life stories. They are of both genders, with females dominating the consumption of the media. In a real life story magazine they would typically look for stories which cover, as quoted, "relationships, gossip, food, fashion, crime, tips/advice, mental and physical health, current affairs". The main reason behind this genre of stories is that they are of high interest to a 16-25 year old, mass market audience. They are also very easily relatable stories. UP2DATE READER PROFILE: From my research of audiences carried out on Google Forms, the reader profile of UP2DATE states that 90% of the audience are female, with only 10% being male. The average age of UP2DATE's readers is between 16-17 years old with 35.3% of those being over the age of 18. Almost 100% are students, whether it be full or part time. 52.9% also have a job.  100% of the audience use social media, suggesti...

Analysing how specific aspects of a front cover are used to create meaning

Analysing how specific aspects of a front cover are used to create meaning

Analysing how specific aspects of a front cover are used to create meaning