house beautiful- audience engagement research

In the house beautiful magazine, they have a target audience of 18-54. This is a larger range of age than I had put in mine. Their female to male ratio was similar to mine, it was 172:23. There was a larger female pull than male on the magazine. This magazine was skewed to lower income levels. Majority level on income was $75,00. This is lower than the income I had predicted for my audience engagement.

One way that House beautiful marketed their product was that they had the washing post do a press release on the magazine. They had created a website and posted it to the Washington post. In the article, there was a link to the website within the first few words of the article. Having it be the Washington post, people would be more trust worthy of the opinions relayed in the article. They have an interview in this article about how they are going to change the magazine for the better.

One way That I would market my product is through the press releases. Having a press release from a well known website such as the Washington post can bring a lot of attention to the magazine, bringing in customers that are unaware of the product. With a press release from a credible source, it can bring in more of a following for the magazine. Also with the link in the article, people are able to click on the link and get introduced to the actual magazine instead of just an article about the magazine. Hearing all the positive changes to an article will encourage more people to be interested in the magazine. 

Southern living-audience engagement research

For southern living, the male to female ratio is 22/78. Similar to mine, I said that there was a higher  amount of females viewing the magazine than male, but there still would be some. The median household income was specifically $74,385. I had said that the median income was the middle class which is similar to this amount. Finally, the median age for southern living was 55. I gave the span from 25-55. Southern living is branding by creating a television show. The television show will be about home, travel, and food that is all about living in the south. To promote this television show, they did a press release.

Another way that southern living promotes their magazine is through an Instagram following. On their Instagram, they post things such as cooking, houses and other parts of the lifestyle living in the south. The things that they post on their Instagram are similar to the things that they include in their magazines. I think that a reason why they have this Instagram is to inform people that if you enjoy looking at and going on their page, you would enjoy reading their magazine. 

 I think that having a social media would be a way that I would want to market my product. I would want this to be a way that I marketed my product because as you can see, they have a 1.7 m followers on the page. There is also a link in the bio that promotes the website for southern living. This encourages people to not only get introduced to the magazine but if they cant get their hands on a ahrd copy, they can subscribe to the website in order to get the magazine as well. 

Indesign class activity

Today in class we utilized adobe indesign lay out our 2 page spread. When I first started using the software, I that it was a little difficult. I had never used an adobe software so I wasn't used to it. After having it explained to me a little and sitting through the class learning the different tools, I really enjoyed using it. I though that it was a good software to design the type of magazine I was looking to create. I was a little uncomfortable at first only because I was unaware how difficult it was to navigate. At times it was frustrating because I would want a picture to go in a certain place and the picture wouldn't cooperate. After playing around with it, I was able to situate the picture the way I wanted to. I think that I will use indesign for my 3rd quarter submission because I like the look of it right now. I think that it looks clean, just the way I want it to.

My target audience

• Age- 25-55
• Gender- Majority female
• geography- any location
• Income level- middle class
• Education level- middle education

• I chose 25-55 for my age demographic because since it is an interior designing magazine, people who have their life set with a steady income are more likely to be reading the magazine and taking ideas to use in their homes. People who do not have a steady income are more likely to not be able to afford the things the magazine includes or talks about. Also since it is a modern style magazine, I feel like that age wont be that high since older people tend to have a different style compared to the upcoming generation.
• I chose my gender as a female majority because I feel like woman are more concerned with the looks of inside of the house compared to a man is. I also think that there are a few men that are going to be interested in an interior designing magazine and will want to read it. 
• Unlike some of the other magazines, the type of interior designing will not be specific to a specific location such as the beach. It is about modernizing your home and any house in any location can add these small decorations or changes to the home. It depends on the theme of your home, but not the location. 
• I said that the income level should be middle class for the same reason as the age demographic. I think that people who are not just purchasing their needs are going to be able to refurnish a house or decorate it. 
• I think that a middle level education would be ideal. The vocabulary of the piece is not extremely difficult but someone who has trouble speaking English may find it difficult to understand. There is also a lot of technical terminology that is used in the magazine that is specific to interior designing. 

Feedback and Revisions

One piece of advice I got was to section off some of the large chunks of text. I thought about how a normal magazine looked and I realized that I think they should be in columns. I think that putting it in columns will give it more of a realistic look and will be easier to read so there not in large paragraphs. Having the text in columns will improve my product because when I was doing my genre research, I found that most articles in the magazine were in the columns. This gave it an easier read and took up more space.  Another piece of advice I got was to change some of the font color on the title page. The white font in the bottom right corner was hard to see, so I am going to change the color, size and bold the font in order to make it more present in the title. Spacing of the article titles and the framing of the picture fit well, but I am thinking about spreading the article titles out more so it uses more space and make sure not to waste any. My photos in the article were breaking the margins so I plan on moving the pictures to make sure everything is aligned and nothing is breaking the margins.  Something that I would like to add to my magazine is the title of the magazine at the bottom of page near the page number. This was something that I noticed on other peoples magazine when we were presenting in class. Going back into my genre research, I noticed that the magazines all had the title of the magazine next to the page number. Adding this will really pull it all together and give it the realistic look that I am looking for.

Use of conventions

My magazine uses convention of the genre, interior designing by having elements that most interior designing magazines include. having all the title names in the flat plan relate to the genre of the magazine helped convey the sense of an interior designing magazine. The pictures that are on the side of the paragraphs have something to do with the topic/ point that was made in that paragraph. The part I admired most about my magazine is the one big letter that I had in front of the entire article. Do my genre research, I found that most articles had started with a large and bold letter to establish the beginning of the article.