P1: Explain different ideas for an original media product based on a client brief
Here is what the brief states:
The client brief requires me to understand how to cater print media towards the YouTube and Instagram generation, it must also have the feeling of an independent magazine. To meet this brief, I need to understand what existing independent publications look like, what trends can be seen in terms of content on social media, and I also need to do lots of research into my target audience of 18-30 year olds.
I understand the term demographic to mean the way in which you classify a group of people based on their quantitative traits. This can be a person's age, gender, location, sexuality, ethnicity, socio-economic group, etc. Media companies need to know about demographics because they can then aim a product towards people with those specific variables. For example, Tatler magazine is aimed at ABC1 women, so they tailor the product to that group by writing articles about fox hunting, designer handbags, etc., as these topics are more relatable to the demographic they have targeted.
For this brief, I have only been given one consideration in terms of demographics and that is age. The magazine should be aimed at 18-30 year olds, so I need to think about their interests, how much disposable income they have, where they live, etc. Young people tend to have much more niche interests than older generations so I will need to think carefully about this too when deciding what content to include. In terms of more qualitative data, we have been told that the magazine I create should appeal to people who "tend not to engage with traditional printed media", so I must try to draw in a new audience who aren't regular buyers of print media.
A magazine by definition is a piece of print media containing articles and illustrations, often created for a specific hobby or interest. In my opinion, the purpose of magazines is to be a form of entertainment and light reading that is tailored to an audience. People enjoy reading magazines not just for articles, but partly for the tactile aspect of seeing nice pictures on glossy paper, and magazines are also enjoyable because people can find all their interests in one place. For example, if someone is interesting in fishing then they can buy a fishing magazine and see lots of information all about that topic, made by enthusiast/experts in that field.
The Bauer Media Group was founded in Germany in 1875 and operates across 20 countries including the UK, Germany, Poland, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. The company produces many magazines in the UK including Grazia, Take a Break, Empire, Heat and Your Horse. They seem to specialise in magazines about lifestyle, sports and animals - but they also make other genres like cars and train-spotting. As well as producing magazines, they also make radio, digital and TV content. Their magazines don't seem to necessarily cater towards young people, but most of them cater for a niche interest which fits with the brief, as independent publications are often for a more unique audience.
Other magazines that can be analysed are independent publications like The Gentlewoman, Kinfolk and Tank. These magazines all have a specific audience in mind that their content is created for, they are also all lifestyle magazines. Lifestyle magazines are one of the most popular genres of magazine, as themselves can include a variety of sub-genres depending on the demographic their magazine is aimed at. For example, young men's lifestyle magazines will include sections on fitness, style, sport, dating and career - whereas a young women's lifestyle magazine will talk about beauty, dating, fashion, celebrities, etc. Lifestyle magazines for a mature audience will include a completely different range of topics, so the content of a magazine depends heavily on its target audience. The Gentlewoman, Kinfolk and Tank are good comparisons because they are mostly aimed at women, but include very different content from each other.
One convention of a magazine is to have a large masthead on the front cover, this clearly shows people what the magazine is called and establishes a brand identity as the audience can become familiar with your logo. Another convention is to have a busy left third, this is a convention because magazines are stacked on a shelf to show the left third, so it is a good idea to put the most interesting headlines there. A model dominating the front page is a huge convention, especially for lifestyle magazines. The cover model will be aspirational to the target audience and will make people want to read the magazine to learn how to be/look like them. A hybridity of content ensures that there will be something in your magazine for a variety of people, and so you can appeal to a wider audience by having a range of different topics.
I interpret the client brief to be wanting a relatable, trendy magazine for young people, for an ABC1 audience and aimed at any ethnicity and gender. This is based on how the brief states that the magazine must be "high end" and "has the feel of an independent publication", both of these things will mean that the magazine can be more expensive, and so will be aimed at a demographic with a higher disposable income. By aiming the magazine at any gender and ethnicity, it will appeal to as many people as possible and will be more inclusive. Making a high end magazine will also be possible because the client has said that the budget is open, so they are prepared to invest a lot into the project.
In my opinion, I think that how you interpret the "for the YouTube and Instagram generation" is up to each individual. I interpret this as meaning that the magazine should be based around a topic that young people are interested in, but this could be anything from food to beauty to games. I plan to later on explore my ideas about topics for the magazine, but I would ideally like to make it a lifestyle magazine because I know a lot about the layout of these and I would be able to cover many different topics within the genre of 'lifestyle'.
By looking at magazines already on the market, we can narrow down what the target audience won't want to see. For example, content shown in The Lady magazine is not what the audience would want to see, as the articles are about cruises, cooking, looking after the home, etc. This content is for a mature audience who are retired and have a lot of free time, so this wouldn't appeal to young people and I know not to include it in my magazine. On the other hand, the content found in Bliss magazine isn't suitable either, their content is mainly about celebrity gossip, makeup, romance advice and real-life stories. This magazine is aimed at pre-teen girls, so the content that is relatable to them is very different from 18-30 year olds, who don't have to deal with the issues of going through puberty anymore, unlike Bliss readers.
In terms of frequency, the magazine shouldn't be too frequent because independent publications tend to spend a lot of time making a few magazines a year with a very high production value. Independent magazines tend to come out 2 or 4 times a year to fit in with the seasons, as they take a long time to produce. I think the magazine I create should be bi-yearly as that would allow enough time to create quality publications. This may also make the magazine be more valued by readers because it is more limited edition, and they may even want to collect the magazines and keep looking back at past issues as they don't come out very often.
The price of a magazine depends partly on the production value of it, and also on how much the magazine is paid for by advertisers. A lot of independent publications tend to retail for around £10-£20, so I think my magazine should be priced at around £15 as this is an average. I think this price is reasonable because the magazine will only come out twice a year, so readers won't have to fork out very often. Also, it will be good value for money because I plan for each issue to have a very high production value, good quality paper and lots of pages.
Independent magazines tend to have very high production values, it is clear they have spent a lot of time and money to take photos that have professional models, designer clothes, makeup artists, hair stylists, designers, etc. Since they are independent, they don't have the budget to have interviews with celebrities, but they do have interviews with professionals, activists and creatives. Therefore, I think my magazine should have a high quality of production too, as readers enjoy having something tactile that is pleasant to look at, and a young audience might enjoy looking at high quality photos more than reading long articles.
Independent magazines put a lot of consideration into the style of their magazines because their readers pay a lot of money for one issue of their magazine, so it needs to be high quality and not look sloppy. Young people tend to appreciate nice aesthetics and style, so I think it is important that I spend a lot of time thinking about the layout and design and make it as visually appealing as possible. All magazines have a house-style they stick to throughout all issues, but a lot of independent magazines emphasise that their house-style is sophisticated and trendy, and this can be a huge selling point. Therefore, I want to make sure my house-style is also stylish and is as appealing as possible to young people.
When looking at comparable high-end magazines, the kind of advertisers they attract tend to be very similar. I looked at Vogue and Dazed, and both had adverts from brands of three different categories: clothes, fragrance and accessories (bags, watches, jewellery, etc.) Brands included Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Tiffany & Co, Yves Saint Laurent, Rolex, Calvin Klein, DKNY, Prada and many more. All of these brands target the ABC1 group, just as the brief states I should, however when looking at these magazines most of the adverts were for products for women. Some of the adverts looked like they were aimed at men, but most were for women as Vogue especially has a female target audience, Dazed is a bit more gender neutral.
From looking at independent magazines that attract this same demographic, I can learn that a variety of styles are used to attract young people. Some magazines like Tank use bright colours, carefully styled models and a bold masthead on their front cover, whereas the cover of Kinfolk looks more like a book with a simple cover image and serif font. Both of these covers are appealing to the eye, but you can tell that Kinfolk is aimed at a slightly more sophisticated audience, and Tank is for people who like bold colours and eye-catching images. From looking at these magazines, I have learnt that a range of styles and designs can be used to attract the same audience and I am not restricted to one style for young people.
Since magazines cover specific interests, there aren't many gaps in the market, there are magazines about almost every topic you can imagine. But with independent magazines specifically, there are a few more gaps in that market, for example some sports like swimming, gymnastics and rugby. There are also few magazines for marginalised groups like specific ethnic groups and the LGBT community. There seem to be a lot of lifestyle and fashion magazines, but they are aimed at a very generalised audience, so this area could be expanded as the client wants a high-end magazine.
The demographic of 18-30 covers a very wide range of people, but there are some interests this age group has that other groups don't. For example: careers, social media, business, computing, sport, the internet, fashion, etc. Young people tend to have the widest range of interests as they have the means to explore a variety of hobbies and career paths, and then find their niche later in life. However, this actually makes the task of appealing to young people easier, because they are willing to look into a variety of different topics, and there will be a niche audience or subculture for any topic of magazine you pick.
From looking at other similar magazines, they seem to have similar front cover layouts, and choose to have one main image and very little text. This subverts the conventions of traditional magazines as the front covers often have lots of different headlines and text bubbles, even high end magazines like Vogue can have quite a busy front cover. This leaves me the choice of whether to conform to or subvert the conventions of magazine front covers, depending on the content of my magazine and the style I pick. Another stylistic issue is that it is difficult to find images of what a spread from an independent magazine looks like, so I cannot take inspiration for style, layout and colours from these. Below are a selection of spreads from independent magazines I could find.
Mind maps are very useful for exploring many different areas and topics. You can look into any topic related to your main theme and explore all the different areas of that. It is also a good way of literally mapping out your ideas and letting those lead into other ideas to expand on. Mind maps are very visual too so you can see all your thoughts on one piece of paper and use colours and illustrations to add even more detail.
Discussions are very useful because you can talk to your peers, who will be prepared to praise you and give you criticism. You can have a casual discussion with people on the same level as you, so what you talk about will be productive rather than being told what to do by an authority. You can bounce ideas off each other and spot potential issues with your ideas, so lots of thought will be put into your idea and you can make sure you have considered everything. Your peers could also help you come up with new ideas that you hadn't thought of before.
Surveys are useful because you can base future decisions on the data you collect. You can spot trends in your target audience and this can help you to make decisions about your product further on down the line based on what will appeal to them. People are also more likely to be honest when answering surveys as they are not done face to face and their results cannot be seen by anyone else taking the survey - so they won't be influenced by pack mentality. Surveys also allow you to find out any information you want as you can ask short, closed questions, or longer open questions to encourage discussion.
Above are two mind maps I made to first generate ideas based on the brief, and then to generate ideas around a specific topic. I came up with the idea to take my magazine in this direction because the brief wants the magazine to be for the social media generation. Since it is thanks to social media that LGBT people have formed a worldwide community, I felt this would be a good topic for the magazine as it can act as a further way for people to connect, explore culture and style, and share their experiences.
I felt that using mind maps helped me explore the possibilities for my magazine by allowing me to put lots of different options down, explore those areas to see how I could develop them, and then pick which of my developed ideas could work as a magazine. Something else that helped me generate ideas was group discussions - I could receive feedback from peers in a casual setting, and this made constructive criticism easier to discuss as it is in a non-threatening environment. The group also helped me to find other directions I could expand my magazine into, for example focusing on different online communities like beauty, gaming, etc.
Considerations and Practicalities When creating a magazine, I need to make sure that I am realistic with the budget. The budget will depend a lot on the production value of my magazine, and the content of the articles (e.g. an exclusive interview will cost more than a commentary article on information available to the public). Below are some pie charts showing how magazines make their money and what they spend it on.
I found a website which will give you a quote on how much it will cost to print a certain amount of magazines, factoring in the type of paper, number of pages, etc.
To make 100 copies of my magazine would cost £612 to print and deliver (with 7 days until delivery), to make and ship one copy costs £28. So, according to the above pie chart, my overall budget should be about £3,000. To reach this price I worked out that the percentage spent on printing and shipping should be 20%, so £612 decided by 20 gets me 1% of the cost. If I multiply that 1% by 100 then I will get 100% of the budget. However, I would have to print thousands of magazines, so for 5,000 copies the full budget would be around £26,000. But this could vary hugely depending on other factors like the production value, start-up costs, distribution, etc.
Above are the mood boards I have created to consolidate my ideas. I have included a range of different ideas I like in terms of cover style, photography style, logo ideas, advertising etc. For a front cover, I like covers that have a head-shot of a model, bright colours and not too much text. For my photography mood board, I like themes of unusual lighting, asymmetrical poses and exaggerated makeup. I want my adverts to be high end, aimed at both men and women, and based around fashion, fragrance and tech. For a masthead, I like the style of block capitals, all one colour and in a sans-serif font. A name I like for my magazine is 'The Q', Q standing for queer, because this word was originally used as a homophobic slur, but is now being re-claimed by the community.
Two Routes
My magazine will be aimed at LGBTQ+ individuals, and I need to explore different directions I could take this theme in to ensure I can meet the brief to the best of my ability. I think my chosen area fits the brief because 18-30 years old in the 21st century are getting more and more open minded, especially in the LGBT community. So a lot of these people are more open to different ideas about fashion and style, as it is a different way to express yourself.
My theme may not fit the brief because it isn't particularly aimed at the social media generation, and young people could lose interest - in this digital age where any information is at your fingertips. I might need to rethink what modern content is in my magazine.
The first route I had in mind was high fashion, with lots of photographs, top-of-the-range, and a lookbook/coffee table magazine. This would include editorial content such as: current fashion, interviews with influential people, recent runways. This fits the brief because it needs to have the feel of an independent magazine, and a lot of those publications are very sophisticated and high-end. This magazine's USP will be that it is a lookbook made specifically for LGBT+ people, so this combines two different niches. In terms of visuals, I would want this magazine to be stylish, sophisticated and have a fairly simple layout with little text per page. The frequency would be seasonally (4 times a year), and I think this makes a big difference to the success of the magazine because a regular audience will look forward to a less frequent magazine, as opposed to a weekly throw-away magazine. Only releasing an issue four times a year also gives the magazine company a chance to put in only the best content and lets them spend time making every image and article perfect. Advertising for this magazine would include high-end brands like Jimmy Choo, DKNY, Rolex, YSL, Gucci, etc.
Another route I could choose is a magazine more about LGBT current affairs, it would be monthly or bi-monthly and would talk about issues in the community and politics. This route would fit the brief because it has more links to social media than the first route and readers can get involved in discussions easily as current fairs are accessible to everyone, whereas a fashion magazine can only be appreciated by people interested in fashion. This magazine would include article content like current affairs, politics and interviews with influential people. The USP of this magazine would be that is it a magazine specifically for LGBT+ affairs, news and updates made for everyone in the community. In terms of visuals, I want this magazine to be more brightly coloured and busy than the first idea, with more text and images per page. Images will mostly be used to support articles, rather than the magazine being image-based, and articles can range from 1-6 pages long. In terms of frequency, I think having it monthly/bi-monthly does make a difference because since the magazine is about news, it needs to have regular issues out as new stories are coming out all the time. I think a monthly magazine would be best because it gives time for enough stories to come up to fill a whole magazine, and it also gives more time to write better articles, take better photos, etc. Advertisers for this magazine would be more middle-of-the-road brands like Topshop, Hollister, Subway, Maybelline, etc.
M1: Discuss strengths and weaknesses of the different ideas
Strengths of my high-fashion idea are that it fits the independent magazine aspect of the brief very well, I have lots of ideas for this route, it would appeal to a very specific target audience, and it is something that doesn't exist on the market already. I feel that this route allows me to explore the 'independent magazine feel' part of the brief, and I have done lots of research into independent magazines so I have a very good idea of what this magazine would look like. Independent magazines are often more pricey, so this allows me to make a high-fashion magazine, as these are more expensive too - this then links the style and my target audience together very nicely.
There aren't very many LGBT+ magazines out there to begin with, and most of these are lifestyle magazines, so combining high fashion with LGBT style and issues creates a very unique niche target audience. I think this route of magazine could be enjoyed by LGBT individuals who aren't very interested in fashion, and also fashion enthusiasts who are allies/are interested in learning about issues queer people deal with. Since I also enjoy looking at fashion magazines and seeing the different new ideas that are out there, I have a lot of ideas of what I could include in this magazine, what I want it to look like, the style, long-term plans for the magazine etc. so I would really enjoy making this idea come to life.
A weakness of this idea is that it doesn't inherently appeal to the social media generation. After discussing my ideas with peers, I realised that my magazine doesn't include anything relating to social media/the Instagram generation, and there is the possibility of including technology like QR codes to scan within the magazine. My magazine has a similar target audience to Vogue, Dazed, etc. which don't specifically target young people like the brief says I should. High fashion magazines tend to attract a slightly older audience than what the brief asks, as a lot of young people haven't been working long enough to be able to afford to buy luxury goods.
Strengths of my second route are that it has lots of links to social media, is more accessible and there aren't many other magazines like this. A current affairs magazine can be enjoyed more by the social media generation because they can join in with discussions, learn about LGBT issues in other countries, and follow activists and influencers on social media. I think a current affairs magazine would also appeal to a wider range of people because it can be enjoyed by everyone in the community, regardless of other interests. Whereas a high fashion magazine will only appeal to those interested in fashion, beauty and photography. There aren't very many LGBT+ magazines already on the market, and out of these not many are about news and current affairs. The most similar magazine I could find to this idea is The Advocate Magazine, which is a news and current events magazine for an American audience.
Weaknesses of this magazine idea are that it doesn't have the feeling of an independent magazine, and I am not as inspired by this route. The brief specifically asks for the magazine to feel like an independent publication, so I think it is very important that this requirement is met, especially as I have done a lot of research into these types of magazines and so I know what would be good to include in my own. I think meeting the client brief should be more important than a good idea because at the end of the day the client are paying you to make a product/provide a service for them, so if you don't make what they like they will find someone else to make it. I also have less ideas of how to successfully make this magazine, I think having inspiration is a very important part of making a product, as without it you won't be able to create to a high standard.
In conclusion, I think that my first route - a high fashion magazine - will be the better idea to go forward with.