Research - Designing my magazine pages

For my magazine pages, I am hoping to use the main colours red, black and white. After I chose these colours, I did some research to find out if this was a good choice. I found out that the colour red is:

• A warm positive colour that draws attention and calls for action to be taken.
• Red has high energy and reflects many feelings such as passion, energy and excitement, an ideal colour for my target audience of which are a younger generation.
• Red is a colour that is suitable for both genders, it is associated with feminine energy but also represents masculine energy which is perfect for my magazine covers as the target audience is 50% male and 50% female.
• Red compliments white and black as it is both bold and powerful giving off many emotions which you can manipulate to suit the mood you are going for when writing for the magazine.

Since discovering this, I decided to stick with the colours I chose because I felt it was a good way to attract my target audience which I think will work well with the magazine I want to create. I also looked into magazines such as NME, VOGUE and Q magazine and I saw that these magazines include the colour red too.

From research, I also found out that I should target a specific niche audience instead of trying to please everyone. I should keep on top of what my target audience are interested in at the time. I know my target audience are going to be from the ages of 14-25 and they're going to be technophiles who are enthusiastic about music and love attending concerts. From this, I can aim to target my magazine at them through capturing everything that's popular amoungst that age group at the time. I can do this through social media. I could find out what they are liking online and try and talk about it in my magazine or perhaps have a what's popular online section.

Every year, there are hundreds of new magazines being launched and approximately 3/4 of them fail and end up closing. Learning from this, I wanted to find out what makes a successful magazine so I can make my magazine pages with certain information in mind to help me end certain problems I may face when making them. I learnt that in order to attract my target audience, I must use an informal writing style with a certain humerous tone to appeal to both the older end of my age scale and the younger too. I don't want them to feel like they are reading like it is a chore, and I found out to use an informal writing style, it will help relax the reader, making them want to pick the magazine up to entertain and both inform the reader in what they're passionate about, POP music. Lastly, using a certain design and style for my magazine will attract the type of music lovers I want. Reflecting stylish and current clothing in the mise-en-scene of my front cover or subsidiary images will help attract the fashion loving readers and the use of props is always helpful when highlighting what the magazine is about.

I intend on taking all the information I have learnt to use in my final task to produce magazine covers that meet my full potential.