Target audience:

For my target audience I have decided to aim my magazine at a mixed year 12. Before attempting to design my magazine or to think about what my front cover will contain I have to decide what my target audience will want to see in a student magazine. This will all be based on what my focus group want, my focus group will contain members that have different characteristics so that I can get a diverse view. I also have to think about the students as individuals and create a magazine that will satisfy everyone in that year. This would include the different interests such as sport or music and even how they dress and what they wish to achieve. The most important thing is to make the magazine a success and asking for a selection of students outlook on what will draw them into reading a student magazine. I will need to make my magazine original, from my research on school magazines I have discovered that school magazines are not often read and spend most the time in between a pile of books unread. I want to create a magazine that the students will look forward to reading and that would have articles and information that is relevant to them, having a magazine that students can relate to would boost the potential for it to be successful. 

Year 12 students are very keen to read magazines about celebrities, fashion and real life dramas. Even though I cannot work this into a student school magazine, I can make the format very much like this, just because it is a school magazine does not mean that it has to impress academically or to appeal to parents or potential students. I want to design a magazine that students can sit and read in spare time, that will give an insight into the school and activities with the twist or relating to their style and interests.  This will be hard as their are so many individual styles that it would be difficult to make a magazine to relate to all of these.

Textual analysis of GQ magazine:

GQ

This is a front cover for GQ magazine. The title of the magazine stands out in a bold black and white print, the black and white makes the title look classy compared to other men’s magazine covers such as Nuts and Zoo. The title stands for Gentlemen’s quarterly because when the magazine was first produced it came out every quarter of a year (3 months). Now it comes out every month but the original title of the magazine was kept because of the amount of consumers that it attracted, risking a change in name could make it less known. The title only consists of two small letters, but they can have a big impact as it is easy to remember and rolls of the tongue. The magazine has a lot of male consumers and the word gentleman suggests it is not a young boys trashy magazine or even for boys at all. The word gentleman is very strong, they do not use the word male or man but this word to specify to type of person it is aimed for and the type of customers they want to attract which would most probably be businessmen or high-class men, not boys. The title is set out on the left hand side of the page in strong bold capitals, the edges of the letters are very defined giving it a classy look that will draw in customers of middle class, it is very unlike the trashy title like Nuts which uses a bright red tone and even the title of that magazine is very suggestive.

Conde Nast is the publisher of GQ, it is one of the biggest publishers and has carved itself a reputation for being among the very best. The Interactive division launched ahead of the pack in 1995, with daily-updated websites for GQ. Conde Nast publishes other very popular high fashion magazines such as Vogue, Glamour and Vanity Fair, which are also very classy magazines. This type of publisher and the other magazines that have been published are also for large well known chic design and content. They all have the same kind of style as GQ as being very fashionable. Conde Nast also is very wide online recognized for its high-quality, beautifully designed and well targeted websites, earning it lots of press attention, a fantastic relationship with advertisers and many awards along the way. It has also led the vanguard in mobile/WAP services in the new millennium and has some of the best selling magazines.

The magazine attracts hundreds of customers every month and people can go online to its website that has a lot of information about the publishers and upcoming issues. The website is a lot like a magazine but with not as much information and brief in what will be in the up coming magazine content. The website contains information that men will find interesting, like bars, restaurants, clubs and the newest pictures of the best girls. The website is set out in a very classy way using plain colors in a chic way to attract the right male audience. It has a brilliant navigation system and would appeal to a wide range of men. It has the history of the magazine. The Conde Nast with links to the GQ magazine has 2.6 million unique users with 46 million pages viewed each month; 250,000 people have requested to receive emails from Conde Nast on a daily and weekly basis; and over 200,000 unique users currently access the content on mobile phones, generating more than 3.7 million page impressions per month.

The image on the cover of most GQ magazines is of a woman, either being a celebrity of a GQ girl. They do not wear much clothing but have a very natural and classy way of presenting themselves, reflecting the content of the magazine. There is not a lot of writing on the front page of the magazine as not to make it look crowded and tacky, the contents of the magazine is what holds the most information, the front cover only giving a brief insight. The target audience is for a man, or gentleman, this does narrow what kind of man would buy the magazine. It would most probably be a business man or an older man not a teenager. The magazine has a class about it and its subtle color use and the way it presents women makes it less in your face that other magazines that are more suggestive, such as ‘zoo’ and ‘nuts’. The contents of the magazine consist of advertisements for fashion and designer makes, also a lot of perfume is advertised. This helps identify what kind of man would be buying the magazine, not any man or boy.

Analysis of school magazine covers:

For my reasearch on my prelimary task I had to first look at 3 magazine covers for any school and any year and to analyse the front cover which will help me investigate into what year I want to aim my school magazine at.

Denotation and connotation: 

Rainey Endowed School
This is a front cover of Rainey Endowed school magazine in 2006. By looking at the pictures I can tell that it is a senior school as the images on the front involve people in this age group aging from year 7 to year 11.
The target audience would be for both male and female which could involve the students or parents. The images on the magazine are very formal and posed; this probably wouldn’t appeal to students as it had more information about the activities at school and what is going on in the school. This would be aimed at parents or even teachers and visitors to the school, for people that want an idea about the school and its activities.
The colour of the magazine is very plain with no bright colours apart from the school logo this indicates what the school may be like. There is not much writing at all apart from the name of the school; the magazine is very simple with a plain black cover and only very basic professional pictures going down the right hand side. Even the text is very simple; there are no colours or fonts used only the posed pictures of the school and a plain white headline of the school. This would not stand out no anybody, but does have a professional look to it, that would appeal to more visitors and parents than the students at school, which defeats the point of having a school magazine.

KEHS

The magazine is for a 6 form called KEHS (King Edward High school for girls). The magazine is called HighProfile and by the images of the front I can tell that it is aimed towards a female audience. The girls on the front appear very happy and like they are enjoying themselves, even though the magazine is very posed, this can make the image come across fake even though they look generally cheerful. The background colour of the magazine is plain and grey, this makes the girls face paints and bright clothes along with their smiles makes them stand out in a positive way. The magazine is not so much academic but more aimed at the fun part of extra curricula services at their school, this suggests that it more at the students rather than the parents that would benefit in knowing what happens in school. The students of school also wrote the magazine which means that the structure would be set out differently to a person that was older for example a teacher that would have written it. Writing a school magazine always depends on who is the target audience, a front cover makes a significant difference to who will read it and who it is aimed at. The target audience for this magazine would be the female students of the school and the contents would contain information very much like the cover, fun and interesting stories that highlight to girls at that schools interests. The magazine has a more laid back approach compared the above school.

George Stephenson High School

Evolve is the Student magazine from George Stephenson High School. The front cover of this magazine first appears bold and colorful, but lost to its meaning. Looking closer we can see that the main image is very artistic, reflecting the type of school and the image to which they want to display to the outside. The image is made up of smaller pictures, including pencils, skulls, erasers, and historic people. The images do have a culture clash as well as the amount of different interests that it includes. It immediately draws our attention and is very unlike other school magazines. It does not have any students on the cover or any relation to the academic part of the school. It is very obscure and because of its lack of information or interest in the school academia or studies, it would most probably be a student magazine and not one aimed at parents or potential students to the school, even though it does fed off a good impression as an artistic interesting school. Though the magazine gives little impression of the students or school, the attention-grabbing image would give off quite an impression.

The magazines is called ‘evolve’ which is not the name of the school like most school magazines even though the name of the magazine is printed above the title. Being a ‘student magazine’ these are the people that the magazine is directed out and that the publishers of the magazine need to have in mind when producing this to suit the years 7-11 of both genders. The colour scheme and ideas would have to be suitable to suit both boys and girls. Colour choice will have to be chosen carefully and even the image I use on the front cover could determine the kind of person that wants to read my magazine. I have to keep all these things in mind when producing my school magazine. The name of the magazine is printed in thick bold black writing against a cloudy background, which makes this and the image stand out. The name ‘evolve’ means development, which is a positive name for a school as it shows the progress in what the school is different. It could also mean the evolvement in students in the school, both these meanings generate a positive attitude towards the school and students.