My magazine front cover will need to contain a bold yet short and memorable masthead, so it immediately catches the reader’s eye. I will also need a main image that is an MCU because this is more fitting for the type of magazine I will be issuing. As well as the image being appropriate I will need a consistent and subtle colour scheme too, such as the college colours or something more neutral. To give the reader more information about the issue perhaps I could put a thumbnail picture of what will be featured within the magazine with an anchorage underneath it too. Also on the front cover I will place the college’s website address, so the reader knows that they can either access the magazine online or in a hard copy as well. Next to make the audience aware of what else the magazine will consist of, it will have a main headline showing this information, and it will link to the main image too. Within the contents page it will display what is on each page following the house style colours used on the front page. Also I hope it will include where the competitions are featured within the magazine too. I would like my magazine to be part of an institution that already produces magazines for teens and students, such as IPC media and BBC magazines. The message and moral issues in which I would like to send out from my magazine are that anyone can read it and there is something in it for everyone included. My target audience will certainly be for college students aged between 15-20, I will research this more later. Finally I want my magazine to portray all college students as accurately and positively as I can, so it doesn’t give a negative overview of them.
College:
The college I want to feature in my task will be Wyke College because as I already go there, it will make it easier for me to take pictures within the college, create my front cover and the contents page with articles associated with the college too.
Target audience:
When creating my magazine I will need to look at who will actually be reading it, so therefore considering demographics and psycho graphics will make this task a lot easier.
Demographics: The magazine is for a college so therefore it will be mainly aimed at males and females aged between 16-20, but also the colleges teachers may want to read it too, so I have looked at S.E.G, which most professional institutions look at when considering their target audiences, so they know what social group each profession is classed in, college students are in the ‘E’ band of social groups, which means they’re unskilled and/ or unemployed but obviously these students are at college for a reason and that is to achieve, so my magazine has to promote this. Only a small percentage of the readers will be the teachers, but I do still need to consider their views and social class... within the S.E.G scale they are in the ‘B’ band which is a huge gap from that of the students, so when creating my magazine I’ll have to contemplate this. This leads me onto the psycho graphics of my research. The Value of Lifestyle scale divides people into different groups: groups which are driven by needs, they’re classed as survivors- people who live to provide for their families welfare and only just have the money to do so. Outer directors: People, who live to belong, achieve and are driven by their social class. Groups who are inner directed: their experimental and believe that they live to explore the World! Finally integrators, who have a part of each category within their personality. I think for my college magazine to provide for everyone, I’ll focus on integrators and what I need to do to provide for their needs.
