Forms and Conventions of a Magazine Cover

This is a front cover from 'Glamour' magazine. I have analysed this using forms and conventions. This magazine is a good example for designing a front cover page for my preliminary school magazine and also for my final task. I should follow all this forms and conventions when I make my magazine cover.

IPC Media

http://www.ipcmedia.com/brands/brands.php

IPC Media is the largest magazine production company in the world. This website helped me gain my ideas to design my front page cover as it includes several popular magazines such as 'Look', 'Hair', 'NME' etc. IPC Media produces magazines for a 'Mass Marketing', 'Niche' and 'Segmentation' audiences which are targetted to different groups of people. For my preliminary 6th form magazine, I chose to do a 'Mass Marketing' audience so that the whole school can read this magazine.
However, for my final task, i would like to do a 'Niche' market audience for a music magazine like, R&B/HipHop music scene. Successful magazines such as, Vibes, Forbes, Billboard etc., are a good influences to help me design a magazine front cover.

Here are some of the IPC Media magazines:-

 

Contents Page - Mock-Up Design

This is my preliminary Contents Page mock-up that i have designed in Microsoft Word after I have created a draft of a Contents Page. As you can see, I followed our school colours such as; black, red and white. The fonts that I used are 'Arial Black', and i used 'Word Art' for the Contents title. I decided the Contents background to be white so that i can manipulate the images easily and also, the page will look neat and does not hurt the eyes. 

I can improve this design by spreading the cartoon images around the page so that it will look more exciting. I can probably add an editors letter there with the editors image because i want the Contents Page to look professional.

Overall, I am very happy with this design however, the work looks rushed.

Draft Design of a Contents Page



This is my rough plan of a Contents page. I added a school badge in it so that the content page is recognisable. I decided to add lots of images, so that it looks more appealing and not boring. For the images, I numbered it with the relating article pages, so that the consumer would know what page it would be. In the contents page, I will still keep using the same colour scheme, because I dont want my magazine to look confusing. These are the rough list of articles that I could use for my magazine. In this case, I could add some more story line and also, I could section them with sub-headings so that it will look more professional.

Draft Design of a Cover Page

This is my rough guide for a school magazine front cover. I have decided to use a medium close up image but im still deciding if whether it should be a male or a female student. The colour scheme that I could use are black, white and red because I want to use the colours that are related to the school. Also, I am still thinking of what masthead title I should choose. However, im thinking of 'Sixth Forum' or 'The Sixth Mag' etc. The audience for this magazine would be a 'Mass' audience, so that the whole school are able to read to this magazine. I added all the forms and conventions to my magazine, so it should become successful.

Questionnaire and Analysis

At the moment, we have been asked to create a questionnaire related to the magazine. I asked 10 people to fill in my questionnaire and took feed back from it so it can help me to produce a school magazine.

This is the outcome of the questionnaire:

Questionnaire

Please read the following questions and fill in the boxes that apply to you. When completed, please return your survey.

1.      Do you enjoy reading magazines?

□ Yes      □ No       □ Sometimes

2.      How often do you read magazines?

□ Daily        □ Weekly         □ Monthly        □ Never

3.      What type of magazine do you buy?

­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________________

4.      What makes you buy a magazine?

___________________________________________________

5.      How much are you willing to pay for a magazine?

­­­£________

6.      What is your favourite part of the magazine?

□ Fashion   □ Horoscopes   □ Celebrities    □ Other ____________

7.      What do you dislike about magazines?

­___________________________________________________

8.      If a magazine runs a competition, would you consider entering one?

□ Yes    □ No

9.      What would you like to see in a school magazine?

­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________________


Results

1. 10/10 people says that they enjoy reading a magazine.
2. 4/10 people say that they read the magazine daily, 4/10 people who reads the magazine weekly, 2/10 people say that they read the magazine monthly, and none chose the 'never' category.

3. The types of magazines that people chose are:-
 - music magazine
 - art magazine
 - fashion magazine
 - hair magazine
 - sports magazine
 - games magazine
 - cooking magazine
 - health magazine
 - gossip magazine
 - movie magazine

4. Most people say that  the reason that they buy the magazine is because of the great cover which grabs their attention and because of the cheap price. Also, the main stories are always interesting.

5. 10 people say that the price of the magazine should be around 99p - £3.

6. 50% of people say that fashion is their favourite part of the magazine. 3/10 people say that gossips are their favourite part of the magazine and 2/10 people say that horoscopes are their favourite part of the magazine.

7. Most people say that the most thing that they hate about magazines is that there are too many gossips and too much advertisement in the magazine.

8. 7/10 people say that they would join any competitions however, 3/10 people say that they would not join any competitions.

9. The things that the people would like to see in the school magazine are:-
 - hints and tips of helping your grades
 - the new uniform
 - The new school meal

Image Manipulation - 6th Form Magazine

This is my first attempt of making a front page 6th form magazine. I have asked a friend to take a photo of me to use as a main image in my 6th form magazine. All i did was crop out the image into a medium close up shot and added an appropriate masthead using Microsoft Word.

This is the outcome of the magazine: