Final submission

Something that I changed from my third quarter submission was my table of contents. As I looked at the table of contents of other magazines, Ive realized that under each title, there was a description of the article. I decided to add this, enlarge the text and change the color of the numbers to match the lines under the title of the page. Adding this I think really adds to the table of contents and made it look more professional. 

CCR final submission

https://prezi.com/view/XA8lqxTGemebykOIQ1Qy/

CCR question #2 Draft

2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?


My magazine engages with audience through social media. Something that is commonly seen when marketing magazines is the use of social medias such as instagrams and websites. Especially seen in the interior design genre, instagrams are especially used. They use social media to help market their product through posting pictures that are included in a specific magazine issue. With displaying these pictures, they are able to show what their magazine includes and convinces the reader to purchase the magazine. Magazines such as Elle Decor post pictures on their instagram in order to engage their audience and receive direct feedback with comments such as "love this town house" or "Wooahh! Now that's a beautiful setting!"

My magazines distribution would include media distribution and paper distribution. I would have a website where you would be able to subscribe to the magazine so you could either buy the magazine electronically or have it sent to their house. Not only would I have the magazine available to be sent to their house or have it electronically, but I would have it available to people who are not subscribed to the magazine in the store, on shelves available to be picked up at any moments time. 

CCR question #1 Draft

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
   
My product represents social groups through the pictures that are shown throughout the magazine. The pictures I included in my magazine are pictures of middle-lower class homes. In most modern home magazines,  pictures that are used throughout the magazine are for upper-classes. For example, In some of the research I had done for the magazine, most of the demographics of social class was for the middle to upper classes. In the magazine House Beautiful, The HHI with $100,000+ is 2,712,000 people. The average HHI for America is $75,000. With a number of people who are in the upper class viewing the magazine, they are going to continue to target their audiences in the upper class. Ive noticed that the houses and decor displayed in these magazine are expensive and not everyone is able to afford it. With my magazine, I wanted to target the middle income class and market towards affordable homes. With having average homes displayed in my magazine, the demographics for a middle income class are going to be the highest number. In Sarasota specifically, there are very distinct different places that represent the incomes. For example, houses that are located on or near the beach are far more expensive compared to the houses that are located more inland. The houses that I used for my magazine are located inland of sarasota. The houses that I have chosen to display in the magazine are average houses in florida for the middle income class. 

3rd quarter submission

Some things that I changed were the look of the table of contents. I decide to do this to make it look more realistic. I like this table of contents more than my older one because I think it looks more clean. I didn't change much on my cover, I only changed some of the font and color to make it more visible when you would look at it. I changed the article because I put them into columns. When getting review on my midterm submission, this was something that was agreed upon on and suggested to me multiple times. I like the way this looks more because I think it looks more clean and its much more neat.

Distribution for Living etc

The graph at the top shows the circulation for both paid subscriptions and paid single copies. The yellow represents the paid single copies which is a significantly higher number that the paid subscriptions. The bottom graph also shows that the magazine is most popular in the UK and its territories. There is a small percentage of other countries that purchases magazines. This shows that this magazine relies heavily on people who pick up single copies from the store compared to people who have paid subscriptions for the magazine. There is an average of 55,719 copies circulated per issue of the magazine. This is a less popular magazine in the US, making it not as common to the people here. This could have an effect of the amount of issues that go out since America is a large consumer country of magazines.

distribution for House beautiful

There are 3 categories of ways people can get access to the magazine. Either paid subscription, verified subscription or single copies. There were more paid subscriptions that were printed compared to the digital distribution. Most of this companies distributing comes from printed compared to the digital distribution. Although there is a large amount of digital distribution, more prefer to have the printed version. Most of the prints that are distributed also come from people who are subscribed to the magazine.

distribution for better home and garden

This is a chart that shows the circulation for the Better home and garden magazine. There are some place that have a higher circulation number that some, but most states receive copies. This number of copies is counting for both people who have subscriptions and for newsstands. This is a good way to distribute because you have the customers who have purchased the subscription to distribute it out to and you have people whoa re picking up the magazine and purchasing it that way. no matter what, people are purchasing these copies. You also have the option to purchase subscriptions online. Online subscriptions have been gaining more popularity since more technology is now common in the household.

distribution research

In the magazine House Beautiful, the way they distribute is through distribution from newsstands and subscribers receiving them. This means that they distribute their magazines through putting them on the stands and people picking up and reading them. Another way that they distribute, they send them through the mail for the people who are subscribed and receive issues every month. The states that receive copies are,   CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, MA, MD, MI, MN, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, TX, VA, WA. These are states that have subscribers and are sent to their home. This is a map of their distribution locations.

I think that I would utilize these methods because I think it is a good way to distribute out the product to not only people that are subscribers, but a good way to get people who are not subscribed. By selling it to the newsstand, people may be interested and pick up an issue and start reading it. If they find that they enjoy the magazine, they can then subscribe and start receiving them at home. Also, sending them home gives people a constant and easier access than having to walk to a newsstand to receive the issue.

Elle Decor-audience engagement research

Elle Decor markets their product through social media. They have an Instagram with a following of 3.5 Million.  On their Instagram, they post photos that can be seen in the magazine. The captions for these photos are advertising what the picture is and what issue you can hear the whole story in. Also in the bio of the profile, it will bring you to their website. People can subscribe to the website and pay an annual subscription fee in order to receive the magazine. Similar to their Instagram feed, they have  a list of pictures that are from an issue. In the caption of the pictures, you can see what issue the pictures are from. Not only do they promote the latest issue, but are constantly promoting any of the issues by having pictures from all of the old issues.

Similar to my demographics, there is a larger female than male viewer. The median age was 45.8. The age range was 25-54, which was similar to mine. Although they had the lowest age of around 25, the majority of people (71%) was 35+. This demographic characteristics had a higher income with an above average income of 150,000. This is above what I had set for my income level average, meaning that this magazine is probably more high end than some others. 

I think that a way that I would market would be similar to them. I would give snipets of the magazine to show people that they would be interested. I would also try and promote all of my platforms using each other. For example, putting the link to my magazine in my Instagram bio. I think this is a way where your name for your magazine is spread around more and people can hear about it more than it just being on the shelves. Having a website is also beneficial because you can get more people who do not want to go to the market just to find the issue. Having the website brings in more income than if it was just on the stands at a magazine shop. 

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.

Midterm Submission

photos

These are some of the best photos I got from the photoshoots. I went to two separate houses and found good examples in the house that went along with what I was talking about for the paragraph beside the photo.

Scout locations for photo shoots

I plan on going to an open house where the house is already fully furnished. I figured that this would be a good idea because I can get an idea of the rooms where everything is already set up and decorated. This would give readers a good understanding of how to set up a room with a certain shape or what the use of the room will be.  Another place I plan on going is my own house. Using my moms room for a picture on how to use an accent wall in a room to give it more life. This would be a good idea because this will be one of the topics in the article.

Schedule photoshoots

I plan on photographing the rooms and the way things are set up. First I have to find an open house that is fully furnished so I am able to go in and ask to take pictures. I plan on explaining to them what it is for and hopefully getting their approval. I am able to get photos of my moms room anytime since it is from my house. I still plan on asking permission and ensuring that the room is cleaned and organized. I am still deciding whether I want to take the pictures on my phone or on a professional camera. There are a few open houses this weekend on times that work for me. I plan on bringing my friend with me just for another point of view. I plan on taking pictures of things that I think will go well with the topic of the article (things on shelves, accent colors, decorations etc.)