Unit 2 Assignment 2.2

This report is a summary of all the research and data I have collected to create a base layout for a successful magazine. By investigating all the areas of a magazine that I would need and could improve on, it helps me understand what a successful magazine necessities are.

The purpose of my magazine is to encourage those who don't usually buy magazines but are interested in reading movie reviews and upcoming news stories to buy my magazine. By interviewing the people who don’t read movie magazines often, it enables me to understand what other magazines are lacking and helps me gain knowledge on what i must include to attract that target audience which is not being satisfied by other magazines. Most people i interviewed said that they don't read magazines because they haven’t found one interesting enough. I think it would be interesting to see if I can create a magazine that people will gravitate towards and want to pick up.

My magazine will have a more visual aesthetic when displaying movie related news, paired with bold lettering and a minimalistic page layout it will have a classic theme of red, black and white. These colours have been specifically chosen because i feel that red, black and white are the boldest colours on the spectrum. My magazine needs to have bold lettering so that it is able to capture peoples attention. The homepage will have a picture of the headlining article, actor or movie, with the article written over the image; for example an action shot mid movie as well as the title of the featuring article. I think this style of layout for a magazine is the most effective at grabbing the audiences attention as the front picture will help relate to the audience as well as gaining support from each actors/movies fan base.





My magazine would also include an anticipation, enjoyment and must watch rating as this gives the reader more information about the movie, so that they can decided whether they will watch it or not. The anticipation rating helps determine how much hype a movie has and whether it is expected to do well. The enjoyment rating will help the reader understand if the movie met up to its anticipation, and the must watch rating tells the people whether its worth to watch the movie or not. If I were to create a online version of my magazine I would include links to popular podcasts and some radio links as well as a page for trailers and exclusive clips from current movies.

After researching and investigating I have decided that my target audience would probably young adults and teenagers as they are more likely to buy a magazine to choose a movie and then go out to the cinema to watch it. I feel I would be unable to cater successfully to older or extremely young audiences as I would not know as much about them. Choosing the genre horror allows me to widen my target audience as it doesn't just have one target audience in mind. The genre horror doesn't produce as many limitations as other genres may produce, for example a disney themed magazine will most likely be targeted at children and won't necessarily be bought as much by adults. My questionnaire will help me understand how I could potentially cater to an older audience, so I can maybe include a few more features for that particular age range. 

Upon researching production costs and values I've discovered that to create a magazine it is roughly around £!5,00 a month, individual issues costing around £7,500. The writers of the magazine would usually receive around £3000 from the magazine, the rest of the money being spent on the copy editors, illustrators, photographers and editors. To include ads would include additional profits and people usually pay between £200 to a thousand to have their ad feature in a magazine. If I were aiming to get £10,00 profit, I would have to sell 10,000 individual magazines for £2.50 each.

Initially, I would prefer my magazine be sold in shops and kiosks on the street. I feel as though that is the more traditional way of selling a magazine as people are able to walk past and see it and then want to pick it up. In my opinion, for someone just starting to create a magazine it would be difficult to spread the word of my magazine on the internet as no one would know the name of it to search it and find it. Once people are introduced and impressed by it on the street I would then start looking at expanding my media options, most likely turning to the internet to set up a website for my magazine. By making my magazine more accessible in most media formats there will be a gradual increase in buying potential.

In my opinion, I feel that the magazine should be released quarterly. This is because a quarterly schedule allows the magazine time to collect all the contents and features of the magazine and bring them together to be double/triple checked. More frequent release of the magazine may not work as well as the magazine will have more pressure to be finished by a shorter deadline, which could lead to editing errors or copying errors. Another factor to be taken into account would be that if we were to release more throughout the year, our magazine would not be as rare and interesting as those you can only by quarterly.

To conclude, my horror themed magazine will at first be sold in shops and kiosks and will be released quarterly, retailing for £2.50. My target audience will be teenagers and young adults as these are the ages in which people are more interested in going to the cinema, which is the ideal target audience for a movie magazine. Leaning towards the more visual side of presenting, i will have short brief summaries of each article that my magazine features, then will provide a link or page number to the actual article.