Preliminary Task: Brief

This was my first attempt at constructing a magazine using InDesign. I was able to place a photo, write text and change the font, size and colour and also place in shapes. These are the main tools for constructing a magazine cover so therefore should be able to confidently apply my knowledge to make the magazine better.

I done my initial ideas on paper. I will make sure I take a photo of it and upload it onto this page.

These are flat plans of my design for my college magazine. I will use these plans to construct a magazine using InDesign. For my front cover I have used the left third structure because it is the section the readers look at first and therefore will grab there attention.

I am aiming my magazine at students because it is a college magazine. It is a unisex magazine that is why I have used neutral colours that represent and link to the college. I didn't want to focus the magazine on a specific gender because all students should feel able to purchase it.

My magazine will be about college life in general. The content will include things solutions to general enquires about college life such as transport to college, the food in college and how to keep up to date with coursework. Also it will include cover stories like what enrichments are held at the college and special events that are happening that month. For example the 'October' issue will include features that relate to Halloween.

I decided on the name 'SDC' which means 'South Downs College'. I abbreviated this because I believe it is more catchy and also looks more professional on the magazine as fits well on the page. I thought of many names in the process of choosing one by narrowed it down to 'SDC' and 'College weekly'. I decided that 'College weekly' was to vague as didn't specify what college it was and also I wanted a magazine that came out monthly; this is because I believe the audience will look forward to it coming out every month as has to wait and if it was weekly they may not be able to afford it. Also more will happen in a month then a week and therefore the issue will be more packed with information rather than it being vague. Another point is I can make each issue relevant to the month that it comes out in.

I stuck to quite bold and bubbly fonts because I wanted to grab the readers attention and believe this can be done better with bigger text. Also I stuck to a main colour theme of green and blue ( college colours ) however added in irrelevant colours to make the front page look more interesting for the reader. I made the most important word in the cover line either underlined, bigger or a different colour to emphasise the meaning. For example for the cover line 'over 50 enrichments revealed' I made the number 50 bigger than the rest of the text to put emphasises on the number, which makes the reader believe that is lots of enrichments.

For my main image I used a picture of a student working at a computer. I believe this was a good choice for a main image as shows to the readers that it is about students and that they can relate to it. However if I had the time I would of maybe chosen a picture that had more space around so I didn't have to squeeze my cover lines into one corner. Also I would still make sure the audience can see its a picture of a student at college however make them dress accordingly to the month/season. Such as for this issue the month was October I would maybe made the model wear a witch's hat to indicate to the readers that it is a Halloween edition because its October.

For my contents page I stuck with the original colours of green and blue to make my magazine look consistent. I again did make some of the cover lines in different colours to match the story. If I had more time I would of added in pictures to my contents page that linked with some of the cover lines so that the target audience had more of a visual stimulus; this would of made the contents page look more interesting.

Overall I was pleased with my first attempt at constructing a magazine and contents page. However when I make another one I will learn with my weaknesses. For example I believe that even though I wanted to keep the font bubbly and bold for the target audience, it does make the magazine look unprofessional because no magazine covers have that style of font. Also as I mentioned previously, I would of taken more time to choose a picture because the picture I took made it hard for me to construct the magazine around it as have minimum space available; this made the magazine look messy and again unprofessional. 

Task 5: IPC Study

IPC Media is the UK's leading consumer magazine and digital publisher with more than 60 iconic brands.  IPC creates content for multiple platforms, across print, online, mobile, tablets and events. This company engages with 26 million UK adults, which is almost two thirds of UK women and over 40% of UK men; this is an huge majority of people who engage with IPC. There award winning portfolio of websites reaches over 25 million global users every month. 

Below is a list of some of the most iconic brands IPC Media supports: 

Chat
Essentials 
Look
Golf monthly 
Ideal home
Marie Claire
Now
NME
Nuts
Soap life
Pick me up
Teen Now
TV Times
What's on TV
Women's Weekly 

There is a huge amount of commitment between IPC Media and its partnership with its advertisers, business partners, employees and consumers; this is so together they can deliver exceptional service, value, creativity and innovation. 

There are three divisions during publishing and these are: IPC Connect, IPC Inspire and IPC Southbank. 


IPC Connect: Our mass market women's division comprises famous women's weeklies including Now, Chat and Woman; TV entertainment brands including What's on TV, TVTimesand TV & Satellite Week and the goodtoknow network. Our men's portfolio, IPC Inspire, has a wealth of leisure brands including Country Life, Horse & Hound, Rugby World and Decanter, as well as lifestyle brands including Nuts, Mousebreaker and NME.


http://www.ipcmedia.com/about/companyhistory
WIKI

Task 4: Essay

Conventions of a teen magazine

The first convention of teenage girl magazines is that the main image is of attractive, young, female celebritys who are all smiling; because they are all smiling it indicates to the reader that this magazine is going to be fun, which stereotypically is what the target audience want. Also, because they are all role models for teenagers it inspires there mood to change and become happy as they look up to them. I think they used younger celebrities to make the target audience feel like they can relate to the celebrities more as believe they will face the same problems/issues.

Another convention is the color scheme used throughout the magazine. In all magazines the color pink is used because is sterotypically assoicated as a 'girly' color and therefore appeals to the target audience of girls. Pink is used so that when walking into a shop to buy a magazine, the target audience of teenage girls with automatically look for pink magazines as it is a color they like. From a young age girls and boys are sepearted by colors; all girls toys were pinks and all boys toys were blues, so now we automatically assoicate the color pink with feminity. Also they all use bright tones of pink to make the magazine stand out and therefore urge the target audience to buy it as grabs there attention.

Also another convention of a teenage girl magazine is that they share similar coverline themes about fashion, weight, boys and gossip which are topics teenage girl typically are interested in. Teenagers don't normally have a lot of money so by using plugs and puffs on the front page it creates the effect that they are getting more for there money for example '382 ways to be irresistible' and '625 pretty looks for you'.

Serif font is another convention of teenage girl magazines. Serif font is typography and is a traditional font for magazines; the font is percieved as girly because the letter curl and therefore will appeal more to the target audience. Overall, the 5 different magazines I looked at all have the same conventions. This is because the magazine companies are trying to attract to the same audience of teenage girls.


For my essay I will be discussing to what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations they offer. All magazines can be very influencial due to there re-interpritations of the truth, however the most influencial are teenage magazines because the target audience are more vunerable and therefore are easily influenced. Serious ramifications can apply due to these magazines; i will develop my ideas further throughout this essay.

Watchdog argues in the telegraph that 'teenage magazines are to blame for the "early sexualisation" of their young readers'. The article reveals that most of the content within a teenage magazine holds inapproiate and explict material such as naked men and coverlines that read 'Gang raped- for a mobile phone'. The coverlines link in with sex at least once in every teenage girl magazine; this introduces teenagers to the idea of sex at a young age and after repeatedly reading the material they will soon become interested in the subject and then become influenced. Also this article says that The Sunday Telegraph conducted a study of several magazines and found that they all contained sexually-explict material; they do this because the target audience are attracted to this topic and therefore will continue to buy the magazine.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/4990907/Teen-magazines-are-sexualising-readers-says-watchdog.html

Wales online states that there is a direct correlation with reading teenage magazines and teenagers with eating disorders. This is because in teenage magazines there are lots of photo's of celebritys with the 'perfect' body; by reading these magazines regularly it will start having a negative effect on the readers self asteem if they don't have this 'desired' body type. This could lead to skipping meals, being sick after eating or binge eating which is extreamly dangerous espically on young peoples body as they are still developing. A lot of people argue that the magazines should stop portraying skinny celebrity bodys, when most have been photoshopped, and start showing a wide varity of body types to reassure the audience that know spespific body shape is correct. Dr James White conducted a study to see if reading gossip magazines linked to eating disorders. His results were that most people who had a eating disorder were regular gossip magazine readers and they also stated that they felt under pressure by the unrealistic pictures in gossip magazines. Gossip magazines go into every little detail of celebrities lives and are frequently criticized for either putting weight on or looking less perfect then usual. Most gossip magazines include diet tips, some are quite extreame, making it even easier for the target audience to lose weight and become closer to looking like the idolised celebrity. However it is not just teenage girls that face this pressure of feeling they should look a certain way, recent studys show that there is a huge rise in teenage boys with eating disorders; this is because in magazines there is always pictures of attractive men with faultless bodys. This adds pressure to boys to become this way as society think its correct to look like the models/celebritys.

source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/magazine-images-linked-teenage-eating-1914020

Overall, I believe that by not putting in pictues of size 0, toned celebrities in gossip magazines it will have a postive effect on the target audience because it will take away the pressure of trying to look like them. By replacing these photos with celebrities who have a healthy, normal and realistic weight will encourage the target audience to eat healthy and excerise to become healthier not skinnier. Also I believe that even though teenagers should be aware of sex, it isn't right filling gossip magazines about it because it will make them believe that they should be having sex and therefore may feel pressured into it.