Research

The first thing I did before I even started thinking about designing my magazine cover was to research Television magazines that were similar to what I wanted my magazine to look like.

I began by looking at the infamous Tracy Beaker televsion series. increasingly popular with the younger age group I decided that Tracy Beaker was a great place to start as everything related to the series was designed to be recognisable to the Tracy Beaker series. One of the very first things I noticed about the magazine was the use of shapes. For instance the yellow banner did a fantastic job of drawing it's audiences attention too the important information featured inside it. I also think it makes the page much more colourful and appealing especially for a young audience. I also really liked the colour scheme of the magazine as I think it's very eye catching and again will draw a young audiences attention. However other than Tarcy Beaker I have had difficulties finding Television magazines targeted at my target age group, therefore I have no strated looking at magazine covers that feature TV stars. At the moment one of the most watched televsion shows aimed at my target audience is GLEE. Therefore I have researched a varity of different magazines and covers that feature the stars from the show. As I wanted to see how they are presented.

The first magazine I looked at was Teen vogue. What I found really interesting about this cover is how ordinary the stars look. It was this cover that first inspired my idea of having our main actor on the cover rather than her character. I also really like the use of the star to highlight headings, unlike the Tracy Beaker magazine which uses speech bubbles, I feel Teen Vogue looks more sophisticated, and is more truthful to a teenage audience in its presentation. The next magazine I decided to look at was GQ which is aimed at an all male slightly older target audience. My main reason for looking at a specific gender magazine is that I wanted to get ideas in how I could make my magazine cover more unsex. The first thing I noticed when looking at the magazine was the sexy photoshoot, taking up most of the space on the front cover. Although putting a picture like this on my front cover would not be ideal, because of the age group, I could possibly put a mini picture of something like this as an enticement to my male audience. I also like the way the magazine has positioned the title behind the main image, as it really draws attention to the image, yet emphasises the title at the same time.

The final magazine I looked at was Billborad. What I really loved about this magazine was the use of every character of the TV series. I thought the way the characters has been cut out and placed in collage effect was really unique and interesting. As one of my aims in the beginning was to find a way to have all our characters on the magazine, I now think possibly doing something similar to this will really work.

Now that I have ideas for my layout of my magazine I am now going to start doing my phtotshoots for all the different images I will need. Laura