SPH Publishing asked me to create four pages (front cover, contents and double page spread) of a magazine for the opening of their new publishing house aimed at a Sheffield audience. For my genre I chose 'Business', specifically themed around business in Sheffield. It includes information on The Sheffield Chamber of Commerce as my featured article to draw in my target audience. My magazine will avoid becoming a part of a saturated market as its able to fulfill a niche in the genre, which is that it will be useful to both veterans of the genre and newcomers, providing articles such as ‘Investors Guide’ which will help the newcomers, as well as ‘Networking’ and ‘Events’ for veterans of the genre. While researching business magazines, i found that they aren’t often newcomer friendly and the ones that are, are useless to most that are already a part of the business world. This helps my magazine appeal to the widest target audience range for business in Sheffield. To ensure I would be able to do this as effectively as possible, I asked for advice on what articles I could use from my client, The Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, for my contents page and front cover. This genre/niche of my magazine will allow me to fulfill SPH’s brief, as it’s useful for my Sheffield audience and will be able to yield a large amount of Sheffield readers with its range.
The angle type of the building used is a low angle. This is used to connote power and strength that is associated with ‘business’ and makes the magazine appear more reliable and serious. Whilst I still used the photo, it was made into a background image, with a picture of the interviewee over it, (as shown below)
Therefore, still creating the meaning initially intended, whilst also conforming to traditional magazine conventions. To still ensure the magazine looks as if it belongs in the business genre, I carefully controlled the colours and type of clothes my interviewee wears in the photoshoot, like using greys, whites, and blues to connote the genre. This was so that i could fulfill audience expectations of the genre (formal dress wear with a professional, serious colour scheme) so that the magazine has more dependability for the reader in that they trust the magazine to deliver factually correct and useful information. The interviewee not wearing a full suit is also intended, as i don't want to make the magazine appear too threatening and high profile for the genre newcomers, this effectively targets both ranges of my target audience. My model is stood straight, facing the camera and with her arms crossed, I directed her to do this so that i could create an ideal self; confident in the workplace and her job, making the reader encouraged to pick up the magazine and read about how she operates in the work place so that they could become their ideal self.
This proved to be a much more effective front cover image design and is more visually appealing than the original plan. Another benefit of the new design is that it allows readers to associate a visual face with the company that is being covered in the special feature, this in turn makes the reader more engaged with the thought of reading the magazine, making them more likely to pick it up.
One primary ethical issue I wanted to combat in the production of my business magazine is the gender bias that men are the predominant gender that run the industry and that men are the ones in positions of power. To tackle this issue, I wanted to interview a powerful female role model within The Chamber for my special feature article. This allowed me to deal with those negative stereotypes of the business world so that I could help to reduce sexism in the workplace, which is a common ethical issue with my specific business genre. This is another reason why the main cover image design plan change is effective, as it allows me to include my special feature interviewee as part of the front cover, having her cross her arms and stare directly at the reader connote how she is a powerful, fearless woman in the business world and set her up as an ideal self for my female audience, as it helps to combat the gender bias in the genre.
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 helps to target the magazine as business oriented and is effective in drawing in the target audience. The ‘AKIRA’ font was specifically chosen as its large, bold and effective in creating imagery of being strong and authoritative, this is useful for my genre as it creates dependability and connotes an ideal businessman/woman. In my original design the masthead was going to be dark blue in colour as it symbolises trust and dependability, which would give readers a sense of reliability when they read the magazine. The colour is also a common colour for suits, perfectly fitting in with the masthead name and magazine overall. However, in practice, i changed the masthead to be white in colour. This is because I had found that this made the masthead stand out more against the blue sky background as it created a stronger contrast. I also changed it to be white as I
developed my contents page first, which heavily benefits from the white design, so to keep it uniform
and consistent I made it white on every page as it 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.
I also changed the cover lines to be yellow for the same reason of them not standing out enough against a darker blue background. I chose the colour yellow as it's known to be effective at contrasting against a light blue whilst still being bright, making the page connote a sense of pride and happiness in working in the world of business, in comparison to a more sad/gloomy dark blue.
In my proposal i also stated that I needed to include a variety of both cover lines and features such as puffs and banners. Although I created more complex designs for puffs/features, i decided to go for a plain white and ‘chamber blue’ coloured sticker design. This is because, although white isn't a colour that stands out by itself, amongst the blue background and yellow cover lines it appears more visible.
Additionally, it pairs a colour scheme with both my main cover line and masthead, as they both use a combination of light blue and white to stand out amongst the other colours and set themself apart from the contents of the page. This makes it easier for the reader to identify which info is the title/main draws of the magazine and which is the contents of the many different articles. My yellow banner also does this as its able to pair with the cover lines, making it so that every colour used on the page is balanced enough so that one doesn't over power the other (in terms of amount of that colour used) and so that the colours are laid out evenly across the page, instead of the page feeling like its divided in half. This further creates the strong uniform look i am trying to make prevalent on every page so that i
can follow the business genre conventions of being structured and organised.
These design choices allow me to follow the conventions of my genre so that i could maximise my audience reach and fulfill SPHs brief.
Contents page- In the original plan for my contents page it contained three images of different articles that would be in the hypothetical completed magazine layered on top of a blue background, taking up half the page. However, in my final design I changed it to a single image of a waiting room, which also served as a background for behind where the transparent contents list box is. This is because in the original plan, the largest of the three images was a photo of the Sheffield Chamber Of Commerce's office to represent the special feature article, which was also used on the double page spread. So, this new photo adds more overall variety to the magazine. It is also effective as the visuals of the image use the same colour scheme of the magazine, which creates a visually appealing looking design, and allows me to add darker shades of blue to the page design to create a more visually distinctive page. This combats the issue of the overall magazine looking too monotonous for using the exact same colour scheme on every page, whilst also still incorporating it into the overall design to solidify a brand identity and to conform to the business genres use of blue to connote calmness, strength and reliability that the genre is known for. One negative of this design change however, is that it takes away the initial purpose of the original 3-image design, which was to give the reader a sneak peak of what's to come in the magazine which would intrigue them to read more, although the new image idea offers a more interesting approach, as the waiting room symbolises the reader waiting to be directed to different pages that they are interested in. Overall, the design change proves effective as it makes the page look much more interesting/appealing which is much more effective at keeping the reader engaged than the more primitive three image design with a solid colour background, whilst still using a structured layout design to create a formal look/impression on the audience that the genre is known for.
The types of articles that are featured relate 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.
The font ('Georgia Pro') used remains consistent on the page. I decided not to change the font per article as, although it would make each articles distinctive and give it its own individual identity, i wanted to keep the formal uniform look, which is much more important for a business magazine as to keep a professional appearance. This effect is further created through the way i presented the contents as list, this gives the contents an almost tower-like appearance, strengthened by the fact they are contained within an opaque rectangle spanning the entire page. This is to reinforce the ‘workplace building’ imagery also used on the front cover to make the magazine more reliable to appeal to SPH’s brief about securing and catering to target audience within a specific genre.
I used tools in Photoshop to appeal to my target audience by creating this tower-like structure. I did this by using the rectangle tool to create a large rectangle that spans half of the page from top to bottom. This created the initial tower shape for my 'workplace building' imagery. I then also created a second smaller rectangle and placed it in the centre of the page so that my masthead would be able to stand out more as it wouldn't be appearing on the background of multiple different colours. As this shape took up a large portion of my main image I made the layers more opaque, that way the image is still visible.
When designing the changed contents page layout i had to find a way to include the masthead on the page to create the consistent uniform look i have been going for, but i still wanted the design of the page to be different enough in its visuals to be appealing and eye catching for the readers. To do this i decided to make the masthead huge and centered, as both other pages have used the masthead at the very top of the page. This creates a distinctive look that not only creates a further brand identity (the brand being strong and powerful) but also perfectly balances out the white part of the colour scheme and uses it to create a powerful contrast that gives the impression of power and dominance, as its literally dominating the page. The use of the font, name itself and size solidifies the brand as a reliable anchor for the reader to depend on to deliver factual news and useful content to keep my audience engaged.
Double page spread- The finalised double page spread has changed drastically from its original design plan. The original design plan featured a much more dynamic design, where the image stretches across both pages and the text is also featured on both. In my new page layout, the image includes a much more complex design and is placed on the left page, completely covering it, whilst the body copy is the right page. This proved to be a much more effective design choice as, unlike the original page, it connoted the genre much better. This is because the original design was looser and fitting for a genre with a younger target audience, the new design has a more professional and structured layout connoting the strength and formality of the genre.
As the office photo is now bigger on the page, this also allowed me to fill the image with my models so that the audience can properly associate the interview to a face, making it feel as if they’re part of the interview and more like they're reading about a conversation with a person representing a company, not just a faceless brand. This is important as The Chamber wants me to present the company in a positive light, making them seem approachable so that people would want to call up to join their membership program. Once again, I used two female models to represent the chamber on this page, as it helps me to further tackle the gender bias and sexism in the work place which is commonly associated with the genre. Showing them actually in the workplace environment in the image I created helps to normalise the fact that both genders are hired and effective in their work. Showing them together also helps to create a sense of female solidarity and represents the chambers values of always having your back. To keep the impression that the audience are talking to a person representing a company, my interview asks questions that have a personal angle about the interviewees experience in her work, whilst also asking questions that allow the interviewee to explain the role of The Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, delivering the information that the reader wants to know whilst also flowing seemlessly like a real converstaion. This fulfills the The Chambers requirements as it makes them seem wise and knowledgeable whilst also being approachable and kind. This is a very effective article that my client was happy with and approved. This conversation style of article is something i have seen in many magazines use, one example includes local Sheffield magazine ‘Exposed’. Whilst the magazines genre is news, music and events, while mine is business, it's still a useful literary technique to use as it's effective at hooking the reader. Therefore, by using this conversation style interview i will be fulfilling SPH’s brief as this will appeal and attract a specific Sheffield target audience in a similar way to how Exposed does.
As well as being able to add people to the office image due to it taking more space, i was able to turn the graphic into a title page. This made it so that i could present my feature in a visually appealing way, and leave enough room on the right DPS page so that my completed interiew could fit in as no room had to be used for the title because its implemented as part of the image. This meant I could make the title huge, highlighting my feature and drawing as much attention to it as possible, this is important as it's the main draw of my magazine and I want to promote it as much as possible. Creating this large scale title page creates connotations in the reader mind that The Chamber is important, fulfilling my clients brief.
I also used Photoshop tools to further conform to the magazine convention of having the special feature title highlighted and visible to catch readers attention. I used the gradient tool at the bottom of the page to create a very dark shadow. I then layered it below the pages title so that the bright blue colour would be extremely highlighted on the dark background, helping it to stand out to any readers that would be flicking through the pages. The gradient also helps to separate the layered photos from the title text, making it much clearer and giving it a more slick overall design.
The strength and formality of the page is also shown through the slight change in colour scheme. In the original plan, the text was placed on a dark blue background, but this made the black text hard to read and looked much less professional. However, I still incorporated the blue colour scheme into the page through the large opaque ‘S’ behind the body copy, this was to keep the page in line with the overall magazine house style and make the relatively plain page look more interesting. Another improvement I made to the page was including missing features from the design plan, this included the masthead and page number. This helps the magazine conform to traditional magazine standards and improves the layout design of the page. Although the page design is completely different, one design idea i kept the same was to use a large, strong pull quote to immediately hook the reader on the page. This is important for my special feature page as it's the primary draw of the magazine and is the reason why many readers will be picking it up, so keeping them interested is very important for the readership.
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 is useful for all my target audience as they may be in the market for a partnership to strengthen their individual businesses, as well as this the information and help the Chamber provides is valuable to all interested in the genre. This partnership is very effective to use for my first issue of SUIT Magazine, as it helps to bring a pre-existing audience to my magazine. It would also help to bring potential new customers to The Chamber, fulfilling the client brief and strengthening the collaboration.
Overall, I am very satisfied with my magazine, as it's able to follow the codes and conventions for both my genre and traditional magazines. In my opinion my favorite page would be the contents, due to the connotations of the design used and its house style and colour scheme. All these features come together to create an effective page that’s visually appealing and effective at achieving its purpose. My least favorite page would be the front cover. This is because this page I feel is the least in line with conventions of a business magazine as other magazines of the genre such as ‘Chamber Connect’ don’t use such a bold colour scheme as it makes the page pivot the genre slightly. I would've also liked to include more traditional magazine features such as images of the other articles to better draw attention to the magazine. However, i still think that the front cover page is very effective at balancing out its colour scheme well and using ideal selves and camera angles to connote power, strength and reliability which are the core aspects of the magazine.
I think that, overall, i have been effective at creating a business magazine aimed at a 25-45 year old target audience, fulfilling SPH’s brief.
