Research and Planning

A thorough research and planning process was a fundamental part of my AS magazine coursework, and was fairly time consuming in order to find out everything that I needed to know to begin constructing my magazine. I began by doing some research of the conventions of magazines, analysing front covers, contents pages and double page spreads to see what the paradigms of the genre were and what aspects I would have to include in my own magazine. This form of research then became more specific so I could do my similar product research, and I began to look closely at alternative music magazines aimed at women, as that was the genre and audience I had chosen for my own work.
During the research process, I also looked in detail at audience psychographics and created an example audience member to establish the exact sort of person I wanted to aim my magazine at. This meant I had to research into the audiences of similar products and identify what sort of psychographic would be attracted to my magazine.
Once I had completed my detailed research, it was important to keep my planning process equally detailed and organised. I looked at possible colour schemes and identified the connotations of each colour, looked at fonts for my masthead and came up with a range of different possible magazine names. Once I had a collection of all of these ideas, and planned my costumes and props for my photoshoot, I carried out my photoshoot and used a range of different angles so that I had a variety of shots for my magazine. It was only after this that I could begin to visualise exactly what I wanted my magazine to look like when it came to finishing.