Research

Preliminary Task

This is a very simple assignment in which you must sketch, design and evaluate a simple magazine aimed at students withing Kellett School. You must sketch and design a front cover and contents page and produce your own images. The evaluation should be a short and simple reflection on your intentions, level of success and what you would like to improve upon in the future.

Peer Assessment

For this assignment you must analyze the blog of another student who has completed this coursework. Consult the Kellett Media Blog Hub and choose an AS student's work from there to perform an analysis of. Ask your teacher for recommendations of particularly strong blogs.

Genre

In order to make the most informed decision regarding what type of magazine you would like to produce, you must investigate different genres of magazine. I would recommend either music or film as these are the easiest genres to reproduce with resources available to you. You must then choose at least two magazine brands of a different sub-genre and discuss their genre conventions (E.G. In the case of a music magazine you may wish to analyse Q (Indie), Kerrang (rock) and Vibe (Hip-hop). Areas of focus are:

• House style
• Representation of cover models
• Use of language

Audience Research

In order to best understand the desires of your audience you must collect quantitative data from a sufficient number of people. One of the easiest and most effective ways of doing this is through online surveys such as SurveyMonkey or the new Google Forms. You will need to gather questions regarding house style, magazine content, cost, publishing frequency, cover model as well as any other decisions where you feel audience input would be useful.

Similar Product Research

Once you have decided which genre and sub-genre of magazine you wish to produce, you must ensure you fully understand the conventions of magazine design. The best way to do this is to examine several magazines from that sub-genre to recognise patterns in design and interesting stylistic flair. You will achieve this through completing an analysis of three separate magazines.

Masthead Analysis

It is likely that the only recurring design element within a magazine is its masthead, as a result this is a critical decision in the creation of any new magazine brand. You must choose three mastheads within your chosen sub-genre and analyse their typeface and use of language.

Institution

This is a fairly straightforward post in that it simply involves researching the production of one magazine brand which is similar to the type you intend to produce in the production phase. Websites such as Wikipedia, the magazines own website and the publishers website will likely be useful for harvesting 'raw facts'. Useful things to research would be:

• Initial publication date
• Total number of issues to date
• Issue price
• Issue circulation (or sales)
• Issue frequency
• The publisher
• Other magazines that the publisher produces
• Lead editor/s
• Other useful facts and information

Audience Survey

In order to better understand your potential audience it can be useful to research their interests and desires in order to best target them in your own production. The best way to achieve this is through audience surveys; in which you should ask them about potential design decisions and content included in your magazine. Survey Monkey is a useful and simple method of doing this, however I am aware Google has produced it's own survey collecting tool which you may wish to look into. Information that you may wish to ask could be:

• Potential colour schemes
• Potential cover subject
• Potential articles/sell lines
• Pricing
• Publication frequency
• Use of social media
• etc.

Audience Response Analysis

No primary data is useful unless it has been analyzed; the examiner will check to ensure you have done this as evidence of reflection on your findings. This post should go through the data (ideally including visual representations of your data such as bar graphs), explaining how your results will inform your decisions in the planning and production phases of your coursework.

Equipment Research

This should be a post detailing all of the equipment available to you (both inside and outside of Kellett) that could be viable for producing images for your magazine, as well as the tools you could use when producing and editing your magazine. All you need to do is identify the equipment and briefly explain its purpose. You do not need to plan exactly how you will use it yet, simply what it is for.

Key Concepts

This is effectively the evaluation for your research tasks as a whole; here you must outline all of the key concepts for a magazine similar to the one you hope to produce, so for example if you were planning to produce a film magazine, you might write this final post about Total Film. The four key concepts you must address are:

• Codes & Conventions
  • The design conventions (common themes) present in the magazine, the typical semiotics present.
• Representation
  • The typical representation of cover models in the magazine (this can be a summary of what you wrote for the previous, more detailed representation page)
• Audience
  • An analysis of the primary (and potentially secondary) audience of the magazine, including Social Grades, Uses & Gratifications & Psychographics.
• Institution
  • A breakdown of the corporate structure of the magazine and details of its publication (again, this can be a summary of your previous institution post)