How Magazines make Money and the Structural Triangle

How Magazines make Money

Magazines do not actually make most of their profit on sales but rather through advertising. Magazines rely on advertising as one of their primary sources of money. Without advertising in magazines, they would not survive. Companies advertise their products in magazines that match their target audience because that is the kind of person that they want to see their magazine. This will result in more successful sales for the company. To keep up with technology, magazines now often make their issues available online for purchase and download. This opens the magazine to a new audience as many young people don't buy magazines any more.

The Structural Triangle

The three factors that create the business model for media are Advertisers, Circulation and Readership. The three factors rely on each other to produce a good magazine and earn profit. 

FINAL FRONT COVER

This is the final version of my front cover. I have edited it since I received my feedback.

CONTENTS PAGE DRAFT - INCOMPLETE

Front cover photo shoot selection

I took a series of photographs for my photo shoot. All the photos were taken indoors, in a school corridor with lighting from a high window.  Below are all the photos I took.

I chose not to use these photos because I felt that the expressions and the body positions were wrong and did not represent the idea for the story behind the article.

I chose this image for my front cover because it fitted my story perfectly. The facial expressions from both characters was exactly how I wanted them to be. Also by the boy looking directly at the camera it shows that he is still in the game and serious about what is going on. Whereas the girl looks sad and stares of into the side of the image cause she is upset about the circumstances and is leaving the band.

This final photo was taken at the end of my photo shoot and included someone who hadn't been in any other of the photos. At first I did not even think of adding this photo but now I have realised that I could use the middle boy as a secondary image. Therefore I cropped out the original characters and background and was left with a secondary image to put on my magazine front cover as another convention.

Audience Feedback

To gain audience feedback on my front cover so far, I filmed myself asking people questions to gain their feedback of my work. I showed the people I asked questions to, an image of my front cover on my computer screen so that they could see it in colour before I gave them a grayscale printed copy. This image below is the front cover at this point of my project. I aim to use the feedback I get to improve my front cover and develop new ideas.

Below is the video of the 3 people I interviewed.

From The answers I received I now know some ways to improve my work such as changing the blue bordered font at the bottom of the page. Although I am choosing to ignore the response about magazine price from interview 2 and interview 3. This is because these students do not study media and did not understand how many music magazines cost double the price of my magazine.

Planning for Front Cover Photo Shoot

For my photo shoot I am going to use some characters for my front cover and then the same ones for the double page spread. For my contents page I will take photos with other photos as they are for other articles.

The story behind my front cover will be a famous band splitting up. I will use this same article for my double page spread. the photo shoot for my front cover will be taken up against a brick wall so that there is nothing else in the picture distracting you from the cover models. The two band members will have their backs tilted from each other because they are splitting up. Both models will have serious expressions because these are hard times for the band. I want the models to be wearing smart casual clothing because that is their image as a band. I will have bright lighting so that the picture is clear. I will then edit my photo further on in my project to make the photo stand out more.

Mock up magazine

Below is my mock up magazine front cover. I have decided on the title 'CRACKED' as my masthead. I chose the name because it fits in with my genre of rock music. Furthermore, the word cracked can represent drug abuse; which is an activity that stereotypically my target audience participate in. The cover photo used is an image that I copied from Google images. After I pasted the photo I used the editing software provided on Serif PagePlus to add effects so that it was my own photo (on the final magazine cover I will take my own photos). The photo before it was edited can be seen on an earlier post reporting my progress. I have used Muse as my main coverline because they are an iconic and well known rock band. The coverlines that I have made are a test for when I make my final magazine front cover so that I can learn how to use them.