Preliminary Task - Proposals

Cover Proposal

The target audience for this magazine are aged 16 -18 college students that go to South downs college because that is where the magazine is for; It is for both girls and guys. The magazine will be about everything that is happening within the college from trips and students work to the more important things like shop prices and timetable changes. Ideas for cover lines are 'student band made it big' and '10 things to make it easier for AS years'. I have used the title STUDENT, it may be very simple and not much thought in to it but I think that's what's good about it. It is straight to the point and students know exactly what they are getting. I only want a plain bold font, something simple like Arial Bold so the magazine is eye catching but not over the top. I know that students don't care about that type of decoration as they will only scan it then throw it away. The magazine will be published every term with a big issue at the start of every new college year. The image that will go on the front cover will be based on the main article of the magazine at that time, it will all ways be a student. To take the photos in the magazine and on the front cover we will use photography students in the college as this gives them real life practice for the professional world plus it showcases their talent. The magazine will be A4 in size because then it is a compact burst of information that students can slip in to even the smallest of bags without it being folded and it stops them from having to lug it around.

Contents Proposal

The contents page will be one side of the magazine so not a double page spread because after all it is a small magazine so there won't be loads of pages. It will be mostly images of what has been happening in the college with the headlines and page references to the left of them, the title contents will fill the top of the page. The colour scheme will continue through to the contents as well with a dark grey background and the main colour for the title. There is nothing else to say about the contents because that is all that will be on it.

Stage one of magazine

Student magazine cover 

Stage one of the magazine front cover is a blue edition with the title and cover line in a bold blue. I did not like this blue as it didn't show up properly on top of the image of me. I have the barcode on it that I made myself and a main article cover line. 

For the final front cover of the magazine I changed the masthead and small coverline to red, this stands out more and with two of them being red it creates a colour scheme bringing the magazine together. I also added another cover line towards the left hand side which evens it out. This one looks better and more professional.

Stage one of the contents was just getting the main information down so the masthead and the page numbers. I carried the red theme through on the title and the numbers but not the text. 

For the final contents i just added some of my own images that matched the articles and a photo of my friends at college having fun. This gives it a happy vibe and is still relevant. I tilted the photographs so it was a bit more interesting and not so ordered. 

Preliminary Task

School/ College Magazine

Initial Ideas                                                         Flat Plan

F

Task 5: IPC Case Study

History of IPC

• Formed in 1963
• Formed by George Newnes, Odhams Press and Fleetway Publications. 
• IPC magazines was created was created 5 years later.
• Woman's weekly launched in 1911
• Homes and Gardens was one of the 1st to be published after the world war.
• Launch of woman's own in1932; promoted with a free cover mounted gift with every copy.
• 1940's IPC's woman's weekly played a vital role in the war by keeping the morale of Britain's woman and supplying an essential information service on behalf of the government.
• Royals visit in 1970's
• IPC was at the forefront of the pre recorded video market with the formation of the IPC video division 1976.
• 1988 announces formation of European magazines Ltd Marie Claire UK
• TV listings make What's On TV comes out 1991
• Loaded comes out 1994
• New millennium new name IPC magazines renamed IPC Media.
• Time warner acquires IPC for £1.15 billion in 2001
• Nuts launched in 2004
• Look launched in feb 2007 with an £8mill investment
• 2010 IPC media reconstructed around key audience groups. men, mass-market woman, and up- market woman.

Publications They are Associated with

Country Life
Instyle
Look
Homes and Gardens
Women and Home
Amateur Photographer
Teen Now
TV Times
Pick Me up
Nuts

Portfolio Of Titles

Range of genres: Countryside, fashions and beauty, home, lifestyle, sport + leisure, teen, TV entertainment, woman's weekly, young men and music, E.G. Horse + Holland, Now, Living etc., You, Rugby World.

Structure of Company and current news

IPC's corporate responsibility agenda currently focuses on three main areas - community & education, environment and the collective input and action from our employees. Corporate Responsibility (CR) at IPC focuses mainly on our impact on, and interaction with, the community, particularly in Southwark, our HQ's local borough, and on relevant environmental issues. We value highly the input and involvement of our employees through volunteering, supporting our environmental activities and participating in fundraising activities. IPC supports a charity of the year, voted for by the company following nominations from staff, while our brands have a number of charity partnerships.

IPC Media has been associated with all types of magazines and target audiences over the years from countryside magazines to lads mags like Nuts.
IPC Media would be a good publisher for a new music magazine because it has had a lot of experience and is one of the most well known out there; they have many contacts that will be useful and are not afraid to publish new talent.
I don't think that IPC Media will have a problem with any type of music genre as they already have NME.

Bauer

Bauer might be a better publishing company to go to though because if you look at their brands for music then they have a lot more and a bigger variety spanning from Magic FM to Kerrang and Planet Rock. A lot of these are new magazines and radio stations that needed the platform to get out to the people and Bauer gave this to them.

Task 4: Essay Part 2

To what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations they offer.

Magazines are one of the main sources of information for people and as we have found out through this coursework there is an extremely wide variety, catering for everyone. An average of 2,600 magazines are sold every minute in the UK that equates as 3.7 million per day. One of the largest genres of magazine is fashion and beauty, they have one of the strongest sets of followers who are dedicated to buying every magazine (E.G. Vogue collectors). This also means that the readers probably believe a lot of what the magazine says.

One side of the story is that yes magazines should be held responsible for their actions. Lots of people, including teens, buy and read them and the magazines know that. Reasons for why people buy them are peer pressure, social and collecting; because many other people buy them we feel that we should as well, they persuade us and tell us how great they are. It is also considered the social norm to buy them just the same ass a newspaper. But if you collect them then you feel pressure from yourself to keep going otherwise it would have been a waste or the collection might not sell.

Most fashion magazines that are published are fake; everything about them is a lie from the models to the articles. On the front covers they use stick thin models, usually celebrities, which bear no resemblance to a real person. Size sixteen is the average size of a British woman with these size zeros in the minority so why are they on the front instead of us. 'LOOK' magazine puts the thin celebs on the front but celebrate size on the inside as if it's something they should be ashamed of. As well as this some companies use extremely young girls, age 12/13, on their magazines but call them twenty. This makes us believe that we should look like that and we are aging too quickly. On top of this magazines have been reported to use Photoshop to adjust the models image. It is used to make them look thinner, toned, tanned and can give them the perfect looking face by thinning your nose, making your face look symmetrical, brightening your skin and much more. So even though you have a model in front of you most of it isn't the real them. Styling with clothes, hair and makeup creates the same effect because it is done by professionals; it is a look that you can not create at home. Even the clothes are pegged on the model so they don't fit you how they were made out to. But as well as images some magazines make up the stories and articles as well by manipulating the interview to suit them or exaggerating the truth.

Magazines can treat their models very badly often putting an extreme amount of pressure on them to do maybe 40+ shows in fashion month. It puts their mind and body through a lot, exhausting them. This can cause them to use drugs just so they can get through it. Some can get hooked and then ruin their career. The fashion industry can also be very provocative and can sexualise children. This is demeaning for woman and creates a certain stereotype; women are presented this way in most media but nobody seems to care. But men are portrayed differently. On male magazines, E.G. GQ, the men are dressed smart, with nothing around them, they look powerful and in control. Surrounding them are a few important, educated article clips. But why are the men presented this way and if a woman's magazine does it nobody would buy it? On the other hand it isn't all their fault, the industry has always been this way. Vogue has been around since 1892, it's just what's always been done; its the norm. The magazines have never evolved to the moving times; they are old fashioned in their ideas. Women do not still need to be just in the kitchen and only caring about clothes and shopping. We are smart and educated as well as everything else. But we are also not stopping them by continuing to buy them. If there was no demand then there would be no supply. Other magazines have tried to create a different genre but they are only small, no one will fund them because they know that the public will not buy it. So we are stuck. Another reason why the magazines should not be held responsible is that designers look at the clothes not the models, they don't realise that they pick thin models. Fashion is about the clothes and they hang better on a slim person. But you can then argue that designers can make clothes look good on a plus sizes. They know they can because of the new plus size ranges in the shops.

In the future I would like to see a big change in all magazines but mostly in teen magazines as they are the most impressionable. They should remove provocative clothing and styles, use less clothing and beauty articles, remove all Photoshoping as it should be all natural plus stop putting body issue articles and 'improvers' on the front. It looks like we should all try and fit a thin box and young teenagers shouldn't be subject to this. They need to use natural models so girls have a better understanding of what a real body shape is. Another thing would be to remove a lot of the love lives section as girls are hung up on the fact that they need a boyfriend to be happy and that it is all fairy tales. The magazine should be more realistic. In terms of articles they need better role models, instead of the Kardashions it should be a strong business woman that has worked hard. The articles should be educational, smart stories that show us about the world. As well as showing girls more of a variety of jobs rather than just in the fashion industry; we need more scientists, historians etc. And in the near future I would love to see the magazine styles merge instead of so segregated.  

Task 4: Essay Part 1

Five examples of teenage girl magazines

This is seventeen magazine at £2.75. It is very bright with a pink/red background and yellow and orange writing. This suits the month of the magazine, May, as they are spring colours. It makes the magazine look happy, fresh and young which is the target audience it aims for. In the centre is a teenage girl actress dressed in a floral swimsuit, bright cardigan and statement necklace. Her hair is down and windswept which looks flirty but then she has a sexy smoky eye. Her swimsuit is very revealing in the bottom half, I don't think that they should have put her legs in or she could have had a skirt of something to cover up. The look has given her an older, more grown up vibe with the swimsuit being pulled together in to an outfit. But it is very feminine and pretty and links the '250+ swimsuits article'. On the left hand side there are two large plugs with the main words WIN and FREE in bold so you look at them first. The magazine uses exclamation marks and symbols to simplify and accentuate certain articles. The main article actually invites you inside to read, it plants the idea in to your head so you don't have to think about. All the articles are about your looks.




This 'MORE' magazine is a lot more full, it is covered with pictures and writing from top to bottom. The masthead is partly in black and then the part behind Beyonce's head is in pink this puts more attention on her. The page is split in half by a bold diagonal strip that cuts across Beyoncé, it is blocked in baby pink with a large cover line including numbers and linking to the month of the magazine. It then has photos of clothes and models surrounding it showing a little snippet of what's inside the magazine. Puffs like "FROM £2" are there to hook people, they draw them in because people notice how cheap the product is. To the right Beyoncé is dressed in a cute outfit, a little black dress, with a jewelled bow in her hair. Her hair is curled and she has quite soft makeup on which suits the tone of the magazine; she is not dressed in her usual sexy attire. But this completely contradicts the article on her, it says about her sexy makeover for Jay Z her husband but they've dressed her in the complete opposite. Also stating that she is Queen B implies that she knows what she's doing and is someone to aspire to but if she is changing herself for her man then she shouldn't be. The magazine has also put an image of her and Jay Z together on the front which shows them laughing giving the impression that what Beyoncé is doing is working for the relationship. Right at the bottom is an article about looking natural and having surgery and which of them men prefer, I find this totally degrading as it is basically engraving in to women's minds everywhere that you have to look good for a man to like you and that it's not whether you feel comfortable but if the male finds you attractive.

This Teen Vogue magazine already looks more sophisticated just by the colour scheme and layout. You can see that the masthead font has been specially picked to suit the magazine, they have used a young font for 'TEEN' but kept Vogue as the traditional version. This gives it a young feel without feeling patronising. The colour scheme that Vogue has used is red, black and white, creating a young but mature feel; its not too girly so suits one direction as well. The guys are all dressed in dark colours to blend in with the background but then their faces are lit up giving the impression that article is truthful about their feelings and not all the shallow things like looks and clothes. But as Vogue is a fashion magazine they have to have a bit of it so we can still see their separate outfits. They have made the magazine young and sophisticated instead of cheesy like all the others. The black shows the cover-line more clearly so the articles are not being outshone by One Direction. All three articles are about fashion and beauty except One Direction.






SHOUT magazine looks like its for the younger teens like 12 and 13. It has a lot less on it and has quite a refreshing colour scheme, orange and white. The masthead is a thin block writing so you can see the picture behind it but it takes up the whole width of the magazine so it is still the first thing you see. We get the idea straight away that this is a pop magazine because its got Connor Maynard as the main picture and then there is an article about Union J to the left. We know that it is a girls mag as its got make up, clothes and boys on the front. Once again the SHOUT has not just kept all the content on one side of the cover they have placed it all around the edges. On the left is an article about Union J giving you an exclusive valentines message, a plug/puff to win Little Mix's wardrobe, Sweet Spring Looks and then another bubble about fashion. On the right is Connor Maynard's main interview with the Cover-line 'Calling all Mayniacs!'. They changed the spelling of maniacs to the spelling of his name because that is what his fans are called. Underneath that is an article about real people and then at the bottom is a collection of images of make up.






BLISS is an extremely feminine magazine with a pink, white and blue colour scheme. Jessie has been dressed in these colours but she disappears in to the background. The light is focussed on her face and freshly shaven head including her beaming smile. Because of this I feel instantly happy when I see it but then this fades when I see the rest of the magazine. The magazine is just too cluttered you can't focus on what it's about. There are articles on girlie gossip, Facebook games, real life stories as well as advice about drinking. But they have also sexualised The Wanted with the title 'big balls and nip slips' which is not what the target audience should be reading. In the bottom right is a fashion story telling you what you should wear this summer. The magazine slightly redeems itself with the article about Jessie 'Boobs, barnets and being yourself.' I know that this is going to be about being yourself and not caring about what others think; being a strong woman. Again its all over the place not just to the left.