Magazines plan/analysis

Front Cover analysis

When producing my front covers i wanted to take the NEA brief into account as much as I could. In my attempt to create and design a front cover, i took inspiration from many other lifestyle magazines and tried to incorporate different aspects of each one of them.

Colour scheme - each magazine that I came across regarding lifestyle magazines had a very vibrant colour palette on each, mainly using quite vivacious and similar colours on each magazine to match its vibe. I particularly drew inspiration from magazines such as Women & home as well as Prima magazine. I felt as if Prima's colour palette was very eye catching and was suitable for audiences between 16-25. The colour scheme i went for was different shades of pink such as mauve and baby pink to really emphasise femininity and represent different social groups. 

                     

Posing - for the pose of my model, i drew inspiration from Prima magazine as many of the women on the front cover do this particular pose, almost making it a convention of lifestyle magazines. Due to my magazine being feminist edition, there is no question that this pose makes women look authoritive which is what i wanted to portray women to be within my magazine. The age range of 16-25 is the beginning of an individuals development into adulthood, so i believe that making a feminist edition magazine will be relatable for this particular audience as they are growing up in a partial patriarchal society, and may need something to relate to. 

Fonts - in my front cover, it is clear that i had used a variety of fonts to really give the magazine effect. I believe that sticking to one font will have made the magazine blocky and dissatisfying to the human eye. Many of my fonts are serif, evoking a sense of importance in relation to the edition of my magazine. 

It was also a convention to have the almost bookmark aspect at the side of the magazine, stating the date, name of the magazine, and a call to action to the website. 

Images - I used an array of different images such as floral images in almost a polaroid format as it was conventional for a lifestyle magazine to do this rather than just focusing on the main cover image.  

Layout - for the layout of my magazine I took a lot of different aspects from different magazines to really incorporate different aspects of a lifestyle magazine.

Inspiration for the layout of my magazine came from the 'women & home' magazine featuring Mel Giedroyc. I used the box in the bottom right corner as I believes it was an efficient way to draw attention to particular stories. I also used the large text in the bottom centre of the page to emphasise the message behind each magazine that I created. Conventions of the front cover of my feminist edition magazine are listed above. 

 

    This was the original layout for my magazine but I felt as if the sizes of the different aspects such as the font and images displayed on the magazine were too small for the page it was on. I also did not like the colour scheme I had started with as the background was quite bland and the green and pink accents were not emphasised enough. Also, the title of the magazine was also small in size which is not the case in many lifestyle magazines. 

This is when i changed the format of my magazine and attempted to make it less bland. I tried to emphasise the colours more and make it larger in size. I feel as if the main image on the cover was more the focus as it wasn't so small. However, I did not like the green background as it did not do the image any justice. Therefore i decided to change the background to a faded pink colour which worked well in my opinion. 

Pricing - when it came to pricing, I originally started with a £2 price for the magazine which i thought was quite reasonable. However, due to to recent events with the cost of living crisis in the UK, this price was not realistic so i decided to double it to £4. 

Discounts - I also incorporated discounts within my magazine to entice audiences into purchasing the magazine. The audience of 16-25 year olds were perfect as in being able to include discounts because many people from the age of 16 have jobs. Therefore, they are more inclinded to purchase the magazine with their own money to achieve discounts on items they can pay for themselves. 

For this front cover, I used very similar conventions to the feminist edition magazine but instead made it a pride edition magazine. In terms of colours i used a rainbow colour scheme to represent the LGBTQ+ community. To take the picture on the front of the magazine I used a sunset lamp in rainbow colours to shine on the model in order to match the background. Many magazines such as prima use colours as the background rather than the location. The location that this image was taken in was a setting full of greener. However, I felt as it was not conventional so I changed it to a gradient rainbow background. 

This was the original image that I used within my magazine. Although it is a nice image, I  do not believe that the image used was conventional to a lifestyle magazine such as Prima. When posing in this image, I drew inspiration from Max Harwoods pose in his LGBTQ+ edition magazine. 

  

For both of my contents pages, I really took the layout into heavy consideration as I wanted to make sure that it followed the conventions of a lifestyle magazines contents page. I found that by looking at a wide variety of different contents pages when going to local shops or researching them online, that they featured images in square boxes to really bring emphasise the images. When taking into account how I was going to design my contents pages, I thought I should make my own spin on the magazines I have seen, while still keeping similar conventions.

Colour scheme - for the colour scheme in terms of both magazines, I kept both magazines the same in both the front cover and the contents pages. Although, in the LGBTQ+ edition of the magazine, I found no hesitation in zoning in on particular colours from the rainbow featured in the front cover. 

Fonts - stylistically, I wanted to keep the fonts in my contents pages very similar to my front cover in order to make my magazine more recognisable throughout. I made sure to use a mix of both serif and sans-serif fonts to make my magazine more visually appealing and include variety.

Values - on both contents pages I included a quote which is associated with my products to reflect my magazines values as well as using this as a branding method. I also chose to incorporate the logo of my magazine on the contents page as well as the website to promote the idea of digital convergence. 

Style - when thinking of stylistic aspects of my contents pages, I decided to use different shapes to create an original yet conventional contents page. On the LGBTQ+ edition of my magazine I used circles and on the feminist edition I created an obscure shape using squares and arrows. Within the arrows were the magazines social medias which acts as a part of digital convergence. 

I decided to feature bigger stories within the shapes presented on the contents pages in order to draw more attention to them. 

Relating to the idea of digital convergence, both contents pages included a direct reference to the app store to download the online version of the magazine at a cheaper price. This would entice the audience to purchase the online version as it is at a discounted price. 

I also incorporated a perfume ad which also appeared on my online website.