Magazine Research

Here is my preliminary research for my magazine

Magazines On Shelves

After a quick analysis of the magazines displayed, what I learnt is that the top of a magazine cover is essential in grabbing the audience's attention. The top of a magazine cover is where the audience's eyes will first glance, so magazines would put the title or name of the company to quickly tell the audience what it might be about. Audiences also read from left to right (in the English language) so the left third of a magazine will also be an important aspect in the design of the magazine. Furthermore, the people looking at the magazines would look at what is in their eye level, so people who sell magazines put the magazine genre based on their audience - for example, a child's colouring magazine is placed at the bottom where it is at level with their eyes. 

Reflection

This research showed me the importance of the upper section and the left third of a magazine cover, knowing this - I would consider and plan these aspects when designing my cover, as it helps produce a more effective magazine cover. This research has allowed me to think more in-depth through the vision of companies and would help me to produce magazines similarly to how they would do it.

Reflection

After understanding the uses of each component that goes into designing a cover, I think the main cover of a magazine is one of the most crucial parts of designing a magazine as it represents the identity of the magazine. From this research, I learned that I must design the cover more carefully - making sure I select the correct components for the cover so that I'll have a good-looking magazine. 

2 Detailed Analysis + 4 Mini Analysis

Reflection

Initially, I wanted to make a cultural travel, architectural travel or food-travel magazine because I liked being able to discover and design multiple genres. However, after looking more into and doing more research - I have decided to do only travel magazines for my main project so I would be able to focus more on the travel conventions and the content.

From these magazine covers and double-spread pages analysis, I think I have found my preferences towards the design and layout of magazine types. I also analyzed how different genres of magazines affect what content will be displayed on them. Overall, I find it really interesting to look at the details towards different magazine genres. I think this research may help me decide on which magazine genre I would like to focus on. I would continue to look out for and analyse any magazine I would come across. 

https://issuu.com/luxurytravelmag/docs/summer_2019 

Luxury Travel, Issue 80 - Summer 2019

Indesign Media Group

Masthead/Title	What does it literally mean? What does it suggest? The title, ‘Luxury Travels’ means a posh/grand vacation. This title suggests that the magazine would discuss places to visit so that people could experience a high-end vacation.
Typography	What mood, tone, or attitude is suggested by the text's size, shape, colour, and positioning?  The typography used to display the word ‘luxury’ in the title is an elegant thick serif. The typography has an elegant and formal look, making it look luxurious - which is suited to the word luxury. This word is bolded, being the largest word in the top centre of the magazine so that the word luxury would stand out and be the first thing the audience sees; catching their attention. This typography was also in the cover lines’ text - suggesting that the contents of the magazine would be filled with locations that are luxurious for people to visit. The rest of the text uses a sans serif, geometric typeface which has a clean, modern and minimalistic aesthetic that makes the text look professional and elegant. The text was almost all written in white; this further creates a simple and minimalistic look; as the white text does not contrast too much with the image and is not hard to read. I enjoy the looks of the typography used for the title of this magazine, which was a sans-serif geometric typeface; it is easy to read and looks professional. Furthermore; in magazines where the images are dominant - I can see that the title will mostly be written in large, white and bold text. I might use these conventions in my magazine.
Image	What has been selected for the cover? How has it been lit? What camera angle has been used? How has the subject been posed? How are they dressed?  The image used for the cover of this magazine was a long-shot top-view of a beachside. The image is composed of a large building (at the bottom of the image) surrounded by greenery and palm trees - with a crystal-clear blue ocean in front of it. The subject was made to look relaxing and mesmerizing. The image may be an example of a tourist destination; this picture further enhances the theme of a luxurious vacation. I would try to include a good quality image that would suit the title of my magazine; the image I will use will be dominant on the cover as I am planning to make a travel magazine.
Language	What is the strapline? What does it suggest about the magazine and the reader? What rhetorical features are evident on the cover? This magazine has the cover line 20 immersive experiences you’ll never forget, This is a slogan that suggests that the content inside this magazine will show the best attractions for the reader that they must visit. It is effective and persuasive making people who want to travel interested in this magazine. The cover also has coverlines which are mini-detailed descriptions of destinations for tourists to visit. The locations were described using adjectives like ‘secret’ and ‘best’, which piques the interest of the reader - making them want to buy this magazine.
Representation	To what extent does the image conform to the conventional representations of men/women/celebrities?   This magazine conforms to almost all of the typical conventions of tourist interest. The main cover shows an image of a relaxing beachside with a stunning ocean; the location overall looks pleasing and this is what usually attracts people who want to travel. They would want to see the attractive and gorgeous images of the locations before they go there, further conforming to the conventions.  If I were to make a magazine about travelling, I would probably also follow these conventions so that I could effectively attract and target the people who want to travel.
Adverts	What kind of products/services (ads) tend to be featured in this type of magazine? Because this is a travel magazine; advertisements that would appear would usually be related to travelling or the destination. For example: luggage advertisements for  travelling; and sunscreen for destinations in a warmer climate.

https://issuu.com/indesigngroup/docs/adq1-onlinemag_lowres 

Architecture & Design, Vol 58 no. 1, February - April 2022

https://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/home 

Masthead/Title	What does it literally mean? What does it suggest? The title ‘Architecture&Design’ has a self-explanatory meaning; the magazine would discuss ideas for buildings and interior designs.
Typography	What mood, tone, or attitude is suggested by the text's size, shape, colour, and positioning?  The typography used to display the text is a grotesque sans serif typeface. This typeface looks modern and professional which also improves the looks of credibility of this magazine cover, making it look more appealing for the readers who are usually working and interested in this category (architecture).  The title was split into two different fonts; one word used a very thin font and the other word used a bolded, thick font. This was done intentionally so that the bolded word ‘design’ would stand out on the title more; where the reader could see that this magazine would talk about designs for architecture and others that are related. The title is positioned top right and does not take up the whole space making it look neat - furthermore, the text was all in white which does not contrast or stand out too much from the image; keeping the minimalist aesthetic.
Image	What has been selected for the cover? How has it been lit? What camera angle has been used? How has the subject been posed? How are they dressed?  The image shown on the cover shows a building in a non-industrial shape - making it look more sleek, modern and elegant, showing that is well designed and relates to the topic of architectural designs. The building in the image is shown at a low angle; making it look more grand and powerful, which shows the reader that it is a good design. It is also lit bright at day; which makes the building stand out more from the sky and overall more appealing. The picture of the building here was the most dominant. This can be proven as we read from left to right, the left side of the cover has no text - showing that the image was the main focus. This building would be the first thing people would look at in the magazine; along with the effectiveness of the angle and lighting - it makes readers more interested in purchasing this magazine.  The research here helps me show a lot of aspects I must think of before making my cover; such as how I am gonna take my image picture, where I am positioning it and how it should and would look. The picture here shows how important it is to plan these aspects before making the cover.
Language	What is the strapline? What does it suggest about the magazine and the reader? What rhetorical features are evident on the cover? This magazine has a cover line that mentions essential components of buildings. This implies that, as a design magazine, it will discuss ideas and ways to design these components so that they look appealing. One of the cover lines also mentions an interview with a person from a popular architecture firm in Australia. This suggests that it includes important content that people who are working and interested in architecture would want to see. The cover does not have persuasive features; this is justified as people don’t usually buy these magazines unless they are the niche that is targeted. Mostly people who are interested and working in the architectural industry would be the only ones purchasing it.
Representation	To what extent does the image conform to the conventional representations of men/women/celebrities?   Design magazines target designers, and to do this they usually follow conventions such as eye-catching covers, are minimalistic and high-quality images. They made the image the focus of the cover and limited the amount of text on the front cover. This magazine conforms to these conventions so that they could attract the designers and architects in the audience.  This magazine however subverts to the typical magazine conventions, having no straplines so that it could look as minimalist and simple as possible.

This is an Indonesian magazine that discusses and shows traditional interior design targeting people who might want to redesign their homes and people interested in interior design. I don’t like the way the title and text on the cover use the colour yellow - which blends in with the main image on the cover. This makes it hard to read, and the bright-coloured yellow looks out of place compared to the colour palette in the main image; therefore I would try to avoid this mistake in my own magazine. The does use white space to separate images and texts from top to bottom; however, it looks like the producers have overused the whitespace in the double page spread making the spaces look uneven from both pages - this too I would try to avoid. However; I enjoyed looking at the use of the colour palette throughout the magazine's contents. This shows a clear traditional theme, and therefore I would try to follow a good colour palette. 

https://issuu.com/indesigngroup/docs/lt-67-online-mag?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=www.architectureanddesign.com.au 

This is a travel magazine targeting children and parents in the middle class to make them want to travel. I like how the cover of this magazine is designed in a cartoon style; it makes it look creative, appealing and fun to read. However, I believe this sort of style could mainly attract children; this is done so that they would ask their parents to buy it without knowing what is inside. The contents of this magazine, however; have a different theme with the cover. Some of the contents are irrelevant to the cover picture, which kind of makes me confused. In my magazine, I would avoid the mistake of having different content with the cover theme. 

This is a vintage car magazine targeting collectors or people who enjoy these vintage cars. This magazine has a lot of images, the front cover and contents page have multiple images showing the vintage cars. Taking a quick analysis, I could see that I like how the whitespace is neatly distributed amongst all of the images and text; and I like how the double-paged spread is a neat single image where the words do not cover it up. However, I dislike how the main cover has a bit too many images; making the cover look a bit overwhelming; however, I think this cover aligns with the conventions of an automotive magazine showing lots of different kinds of cars. 

This is a cooking or culinary magazine targeting the home cooks in a household. It has a very attractive and delicious food in the cover image and I think this magazine is organized really neatly. I like how images in the double-paged spread are distributed into sections to keep it neat. This magazine seems to have a golden brown and black colour theme with a white background and it follows the theme to keep it looking eye-catching. I really like the neatness of this design and for my own magazine, I might implement a colour palette. The only thing I do not like is how the text is aligned. 

Additional Research

Here are some travel magazines as I decided to use travel as my magazine genre

From a quick Google search, we could see that the conventions of the main covers are a single, very attractive and eye-catching main cover image with usually a large white text for the title or other text on the cover.

Mini-Reflection

I think that I would need to follow these conventions, meaning that I would need a really good camera to take these pictures. That might be a problem for me later on when designing these covers. 

This is the link to my double-paged spread research and development: 
https://adrien-regentsmedia.blogspot.com/2023/11/double-page-spread-research-developement.html