PURPOSE:
The purpose of my business magazine is to inform readers about The Sheffield Chamber Of Commerce and business in Sheffield and to promote The Chamber.
FORM AND GENRE
Form: My magazine will be citywide and aimed at business owners within Sheffield, this is due to the Chamber promoting only operating within Sheffield, as well as the brief requirements asking for a magazine aimed at a Sheffield audience. This means that some of my articles will need to entice the people of Sheffield with important or interesting information they might need to know. I could do this by including images of recognizable landmarks within Sheffield.
Genre: The genre of my magazine will be business in order to meet my genre I will need to create a magazine that is formal and professional so that it is taken seriously by clients and makes the magazine more reliable. If the magazine is presented as more informal, this could lead to business owners not trusting my source and taking the large step that would be joining the Chamber.
CONTENT - M GRADE
My magazine will be themed around business in Sheffield. It will include information on The Sheffield Chamber of Commerce as my primary aspect to draw in readers.
Front cover- For the front cover of my magazine I want to use a main cover image of the office block that the Sheffield Chamber is located in. This is because it is symbolic of the place business begins and because this main cover image helps to push the magazine away from traditional fashion/music magazines that use models for main cover images so that it stands out more as serious and professional. The angle type of the building used will be a low angle. This is to connote power and strength that is associated with ‘business’ and makes the magazine appear more reliable and serious. I created a large bold masthead for my magazine ‘SUIT’. This is stereotypical for a business magazine as it also helps to connote power, strength and reliability. This magazine convention will help to target the magazine as business oriented and will help to draw in/meet the target audience. The masthead will be dark blue in colour as it symbolises trust and dependability, which will give readers a sense of reliability when they read the magazine. The colour used is also a common colour for suits, perfectly fitting in with the masthead name and magazine overall. It also fits in well with the magazine's overall blue-ish colour scheme and gives the magazine a sense of identity, which is important and stereotypical for all genres of magazine so that readers can easily identify it and know what they are expecting to see, making it more reliable. Cover lines and additional features such as puffs are an important part of a magazine cover as they detail what will be included in the magazine in a short and simple ways, this could ultimately decide whether the customer buys the magazine or not. This means that I will need to include both a variety main cover lines and features (such as puffs and banners) to entice the reader so that they will pick the magazine up to increase the readership. The cover lines will be the same colour as the masthead for the same reasons. This will create a uniform look that will connote the genre and create an impression of reliability.
Contents page- My contents page will contain three images of different articles that would be in the final product of the hypothetical full magazine, located on the right side of the page. I will do this as it falls in line with the conventions of a magazine's contents page, often giving the readers a taster for what's in the magazine and draws the reader's attention to the most interesting articles/primary draw of the magazine. On my contents page I will make sure to carry over my blue colour scheme from the front cover design as its important for creating a magazine brand identity and keeping the strong, dependent and calm impression that the colour blue creates for the audience, whilst conforming to the business genre conventions. The structured layout design of the 3 arranged images all on the right side of the page whilst the text is down the side of the left will create a strong formal look, and remind readers of a tall building, once again connoting power and formality that the genre is known for.
The types of articles featured will all be related to my genre; this is important for creating authenticity and keeping readers intrigued. It also makes the magazine more dependable, as the inclusion of unrelated articles may make the magazine seem unprofessional, causing the reader to put it down and look for more focused magazines in the genre. Titles include: ‘Social’, ‘Business Awareness’, ‘Investors Guide’, ‘Special Feature’, ‘Networking’, ‘Events’, ‘Member Updates’, ‘Stocks’ and ‘Shop Office Supplies’. These are all articles related to my genre, as I got advisement of off The Chamber themselves for what the article titles could be. An important aspect of my magazine and what helps it stand out from others of the same genre is that it is useful to veterans of the genre and newcomers alike. I made sure to reflect this in my article titles, such as ‘Investors Guide’ targeting newcomers whilst ‘Events’ are useful to business veterans.
1st Double page spread- This page is important to hook the readers on the primary draw of the magazine; the special feature. To do this I will use a strong pull quote, large and bold to immediately draw the reader's attention to the text, intriguing them and making them want to read more. It being on the first page of the DPS is important as the reader's eyes will naturally fall on that page to read from left to right. This is to ensure the reader doesn’t lose interest before reading the main hook whilst flicking through pages. This page is also where the main body copy will be as most of the second page will be taken up by my photo. The Sheffield Chamber of Commerce is an excellent feature to choose for the genre of my magazine as they specialise in helping small business grow in and around Sheffield. This will be useful for all of my target audience as they may be in the market for a partnership to strengthen their individual businesses and the information and help they provide is valuble to all interested in the genre. It would also help to bring potential new customers to The Chamber, giving them something in return and strengthening the collaboration.
2nd Double Page Spead- My second DPS page will be dominated by a large image of the Sheffield Chamber offices whilst they are busy and at work, making The Chamber appear active and serious. Although there will still be more body copy on this page, this helps to break up the large block of text to make the page look easier/more manageable to read and add a more stylised design to the page to make it more visually appealing. This page, as well as the first DPS page, will use a light blue colour scheme for the background with a darker blue text and feature shapes. This is to make the magazine have a streamlined design and identity and help the page not look like a typical document with text that may bore the reader.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
SUIT is directed at primarily male 25-40-year-olds (average age of reader is 35) who are looking for a magazine that updates them monthly on everything Business in Sheffield. They have an average-moderately high spending power and are in the B social grade as the magazine directly targets people with a secure and professional job. To target this audience SUIT will use a primarily blue colour scheme as it fulfills genre expectations and connotes calmness, security and trust. This is helpful for my business magazine as SUIT targets a variety of people involved in business, whether they are just starting in the world of business or are a veteran, the magazine offers something for anyone interested in business in Sheffield.
RESOURCES AND PERSONNEL
For my magazine I will be the editor, graphic designer and photographer. For creating this magazine, I will need hardware such as: a computer, monitor, mouse and keyboard. This computer setup will be important as the computer will be where I do all my written work and most of my preproduction and planning. This is a must have for creating and completing the documents, without it I cannot produce barely any of the magazine. As well as this, I will be using a laptop to complete any of the same work outside of lesson. I will also use a pencil, ruler, paper and pen to create other preproduction documents such as visualisation diagrams for each page of the magazine. Software I will use includes: ‘Photoshop’ for creating and editing the pages themselves, ‘Blogger’ to store and organise all my work in one place, ‘Edexcel’ to create gantt charts and production schedules, and Word/PowerPoint to create and edit written work before uploading it to blogger.
DISTRIBUTION AND MARKETING METHODS – M
Due to my magazine being about Business, I have a niche audience that I need to market to in order to sell the magazine. To reach this audience, I have to use below the line advertising techniques as they are cheaper than above the line advertising and are effective at targeting my audience. A radio advert on Sheffield live will be a great form of advertising as Sheffield Live are known for advertising small brands on their station for a reasonable price. This is important as I do not have a large budget for marketing the magazine as this is the first issue of SUIT magazine and isn't an established brand yet. Radio adverts target my audience as people involved in business travel a lot, so a radio advert will be able to reach my audience who travel by car. Another below the line marketing method I could use is using my client's socials to advertise the magazine. Due to my magazine being the first issue, I don’t have an established brand to reliably advertise my magazine online. So, using the clients social media page will allow me to advertise in the online space effectively where there's already a market and audience. The radio ad and social media posts (on both the SUIT official social media and The Chamber social media) will use similar talking points/pull quotes, creating synergy in my advertising across the multiple media.
The circulation of my magazine will be 600, whilst readership will be around 1200. These will be distributed at train stations, town halls and in offices/waiting areas. This is because my audience travels a lot between offices, home and events, meaning they are likely to pick up the magazine in high traffic areas of travel and waiting areas in office buildings. Readership is higher than circulation as copies of the magazine get passed around amongst friends/family, meaning more people will read the magazine than copies bought. Circulation and readership are not as high as that of a professional, well-established magazine as I do not have the large target audience, developed over time like other magazines of the genre have, so I will have less overall printed copies to save money as I do not have the audience for a large amount of copies, especially for a magazine that is for the local Sheffield area, compared to worldwide brands of the same genre.
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