My brief is to create two real-life magazine covers and contents pages for a 16-25 year old audience who expect to be emotionally engaged. The magazine will be for Bauer, a company which also owns numerous other magazines of a similar nature. I will primarily target a female audience as this demographic is more likely to be interested in the genre and subject matter of the magazine, however I will avoid ruling out a male audience. Bauer’s existing magazines all follow very similar codes and conventions, with each magazine being almost indistinguishable from the others. I intend to follow this trend – using similar bright colour schemes and layouts. I will mimic the themes of the existing magazines (family-focused, ‘gossip’ and over-the-top levels of drama), albeit scaled down slightly to fit the younger audience. I will use the emotive, exclamatory headlines and sell lines consistent with the genre, with the intention of drawing the intention of the reader. While I will follow most codes and conventions, I intend to break the common conventions around representation in this genre in order to represent not just the demographics of young people, but also to better reflect the social and political attitudes around diversity and representation found in the younger age groups. In order to do this, I will feature images of people on my cover who are not all the typical ‘young white woman’ often found on the front covers. This will largely involve using people who are part of non-white ethnic groups, gender non-conforming or male. It will feature mostly working/lower middle class representations where relevant, as this demographic is most likely to be interested in the publication. In order to appeal to the target audience, I will present positive representations of young people, in contrast to many publications aimed at older audiences in which the youth are portrayed negatively. 308 words
For the website, I will follow the typical conventions. It will be simplistic and feature mainly white and red, as this is the most common colour scheme. It will feature a small number of images relating to the articles and content listed. 42 words
In order to remain accessible to the young target audience, the price listed on the cover will be low (£3.50), with much of the revenue being made up through advertisements both online and within the publication. In order to help link the two products (the magazine and website) I will use the same advertisements (or the same products) on both. The website will be simplistic, with a white and red colour scheme much like the other Bauer websites for its magazines. The magazine cover and contents page will feature calls to action for the reader to visit the website using the link. The website will feature images of the covers themselves to further reinforce the convergence. Furthermore, when discussing topics which overlap between the magazine and the website, I will use similar phrasing and terminology to strengthen the link.
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