Visiting the Soup Kitchen

The second idea for the double page spread was an article about a christmas special at the local soup kitchen organised by a church. My plan initially is for my magazine to have a winter seasonal theme and this story would be a perfect fit.

With this article, I visited the soup kitchen and took part in serving the less fortunate people who attended.  After expressing to the workers and the attendees about doing a magazine article about the soup kitchen they allowed me to take pictures to establish the setting and these images will contribute to the magazine.

In Wolverhampton West Magazine, Wolverhampton Magazine and Time Out London magazine their double page spreads featured; on the left page a main article and on the right page a full paged advertisement and I think this would be the best format for this article.

Example from Wolverhampton West Magazine:

Emailing Wolverhampton Magazine and Finding a Production Tutorial

To find out more about the production process of  magazine and advice as to how I should produce the magazine we called and emailed the editors of Wolverhampton Magazine for professional advice.

Theses were the following questions:

Question 1:

How do you find out information for your stories?

Question 2:

How long does it take for a magazine to be produced?

Question 3:

What software do you use to create your magazine?

Question 4: 

How long do you allocate to complete a double page spread?

Question 5:

How many people do you usually have working on an article?

Unfortunately, they were unable to reply but I appreciate they are very busy. Instead, I found a tutorial on YouTube to clarify how Adobe InDesign operated as this is the software I will use to produce the magazine.

The Planned Layout for the Fashion Double Page Spread

Interview for the Article

For the demanded fashion article about The Clothes Show I interviewed my friend who is studies and interested in pursuing a career in the performing arts for her opinion on the event and how it inspired her.  I thought this would make the article more interactive with the younger readers who may relate to the answers and gain information to then visit themselves.  This article primarily targets female consumers as from the audience research questionnaire they were the ones who demanded this feature.

Also looking through Wolverhampton West Magazine, the feature they had on fashion only featured women's clothing suggesting we will gain female consumers by this article and the will be most read  by this demographic.

Visiting The Clothes Show

The main fashion article is about The Clothes Show that was held at the NEC in Birmingham. I attended the exhibition with my friend, Hannah who studies the performing arts and saw this as an opportunity to gain knowledge and inspiration for her own ideas to pursue a career in this field.  I thought interviewing her on what she experienced and learned would be make the ideal story that would encourage teenagers to read our magazine and in return be influenced to actively research and experiment with fashion themselves.  

At the event I was able to photograph what was occurring around me that would be relevant in my magazine. This also gave me the idea to have the 3 equivalent high street outfits modelled as they were on the catwalk on the following right hand page. 

Time Out London Case Study

Out of the group of people who answered our audience research questionnaire nobody under 40 have read their regional magazine.  I would like to attract a younger audience but also keep the interest of our older consumers.  From the OCR email they advised us to do research into Time Out London magazine, which typically features popular culture articles.

Front cover analysis

Features:

•   Nightlife

•   Music, Arts and Culture

•   Food and Drink

•   Film

•   City Guide

These topics target the party lifestyle of youth culture in particular with offers and advertisements to exclusive events.  This is what I have planned to incorporate in the magazine with the right page of the double page. However these stories will not be prominent in our magazine so we don't alienate our older consumers. 


Distribution

·      Subscription packages- more affordable and creates a buying process that is easier for consumers as they don’t have to go out to stores every week to buy but the magazine can be delivered to their doorstep.  This is useful for younger audience in full-time education.

·      Print based and digital copies- more ways to access to suit the preference of the consumer

·      Blog- able to follow continuous updates on the go

·      Time Out has a circulation of 308,579 copies per week.

·      Time Out London is London’s most popular magazine with over 1m people per month reading a copy.                            

Advertising

·      Merchandising- the popularity of the magazine has turned into an iconic brand with t-shirts and posters available on an online store.

·      Circulation of adverts online- having connections to larger conglomerates such as Amazon may attract consumers to the magazine so they can gain insight into exclusive offers, which is ideal for students living on a budget.

·      Social media

·      Comments section- Emphasizes the idea of democracy where consumers can comment of the content of the magazines website.  Some of these comments may be critical and inform the company to change certain aspects to make it more accessible.

Content Ideas

I was confused about what stories I could include in our regional magazine and had to email OCR  for clarification.  The feedback I got from the email as regards of what to include was that the content must be recent and that the 'definition of a regional magazine is reasonably broad- in other words it doesn't just have to be geographical/regional  but could be young women in Birmingham- musicians in Liverpool- for instance.'

I think it's best to keep to my regional area of the West Midlands and Wolverhampton, where I am able to go and research possible articles.

Similarly to the layout in Wolverhampton Magazine, I want each double page of the magazine to be split with the main article on one page and on the other page, a full-page advertisement.  The reason behind this is because not only will our magazine document and praise the efforts of the public, but also will promote local businesses and charities.  Before designing the layout of the double page spread I think it’s most important to have the content of the articles sorted.

First double page spread idea 

Fashion and shopping were most demanded to feature in our magazine, according to the feedback I gained from our audience research questionnaire.  The content for the fashion article will be about The Clothes Show.  Including these particular events is an attempt to attract a younger demographic and make youths excited about their local area.  Also the marketing of this event is mostly through social media and their website which helps promotes the business and having an address at the bottom page encourages consumers to investigate into the story.

The Clothes Show will be the main article on the left side of the page and there will be stylised outfits on the right page.  I think this chronologically makes sense, so the reader will see a fashion vent where they can gain inspiration.

Second double page spread idea 

To find information about cooking and food events in the West Midlands I visited the local community centre and spoke to a couple of the workers and found leaflets about local events.

I found a small soup kitchen who operate on Saturday evenings. This is an ideal story to fill the demand of a cooking feature and encourage consumers to join because there are more upcoming events.  Also it has a website and social media accounts, so the consumers can interact and gain more information.  This story will be featured on the left page as the main article and on the right page will be an advertisement for the soup kitchen itself like the layout in Wolverhampton Magazine.  These articles will appeal to the new younger demographic we are trying to attract, as well as involve the main older consumers to be charitable.