Postgraduate degree

MA Magazine Journalism (Grade: Merit)

University of Central Lancashire 2015-2016

NCTJ and PPA accredited course that focuses mainly on magazine production including two group magazines, a business and a consumer, and I was editor-in-chief of the business magazine and digital editor for the user.

During this course, I also learnt about the law and responsibilities of being a journalist, how to write hard news and how to use new media and how to tell a story in a variety of ways. As well as learning Teeline shorthand that I worked to 80 words a minute.

Teal Magazine

A few months back I started to make Teal magazine for my final project of my Master’s degree and here is the final thing.

All work, design, copy, and interviews are mine. The majority of the photography is mine too however, some of the photos are not but they are all credited on the inside bottom of each page. Adverts have no copyright clearance and are stated as such.

The theme for the magazine would be a travel and food magazine that is for people who love to experience new things but don’t have the disposable income to do so.

It is mainly for the younger market who are not so freely catered to in the travel and food magazine industry so there is a huge target market who are waiting for this type of magazine.

The PDF can be found here: Teal magazine final

The business plan and media pack can be seen here: Teal magazine business plan

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Teal magazine business plan and media pack

I already showed you the basics of my MA magazine project and what it is going to be, but now I can show you a lot more and share with you the business plan and the media pack for the project. This goes into a lot more detail about the different areas I have covered and thought about when it comes to this magazine.

When the magazine has been marked I will upload it, I may post little sneak peaks as well to show how the magazine is progressing.

teal logo rectangle

 

 

Teal magazine Media pack

 

TEAL, which stands for travel, eating and living, will be about travel and food with lifestyle pieces designed for millennials with a lower income who want to travel and experience new things.

 

TEAL is a monthly consumer magazine and is priced at £2.50 per issue.

 

Target Audience

The target market is the younger generation who wants to travel and experience new food and see amazing places but are not able to do so as they do not have a lot of disposable money. The age bracket will be 18-30 who are DC2C1B but will aim to be in the ABC1 demographic.

The magazine will be intelligent because 47% of all 17-30 year-olds in the UK, according to the GOV department of Business, Innovation and Skills, have attended some form of higher education in 2014. So despite the lower income bracket there will still be articles suited for intelligent people as they have been to university.

There is also a tend that Millennials would more rather spend their money on ‘experiences’ and holidays rather than owning things. Eventbrite, showed this in a survey in 2014, that 3 in 4 millennials would more rather spend money on experiences than save money. This is linked to the Fear of Missing Out, FOMO, feeling which was increased with social media. Millennials would go to an event because they don’t like seeing others on social media having a good time and not being included. The magazine will use this and promote experience more than material things.

The survey that was taken shows that the majority would love to travel yet do not have enough money and would like to find ways to save money and not have the FOMO.

 

Reader Profile

Emily is twenty-five-year-old and graduate with degree in business management. She is working in the city for a large business firm. She lives in a small rented apartment because she wants to save up for travelling and eating out with her friends. She regularly uses social media to document her life and loves reading bloggers and seeing other people’s experiences.

Emily

 

Editorial

The magazine will be split in to four sections: travel, food, features and regulars.

Each month there will be a place or a country that the magazine will focus on. This will be the main cover photo and will also be in the centre of the magazine as well. The three-page article will have details about the country in terms of what to do as a tourist but also focus on the culture and history of the place. Then there will be three pages after dedicated to the food of the country.

There will also be sections for cheep holidays or UK based place to travel as an affordable option. Also some of the food articles will be about how to create food from the other side of the world with the view that even if you cannot travel there you can still experience the food.

With the millennial demographic which TEAL is trying to hit will mean that interviewees about food and travel will be more from the blogger and YouTuber community rather than the classic route of chefs that most food magazines take. Technology and apps will also feature as well as parts about photography as the target audience would love to photograph certain aspects of their lives.

There will be a section of the magazine that will be topical and uses current events or hard-hitting topics as a talking point. Most of this will be opinion based and cover things like culture, politics and things to keep in mind when travelling around the world.

For a break down of the first magazine and the flat plan with proposed articles:

Teal, UCLan, Flat Plan

The style of the magazine will be very minimal with big white spaces giving it a sleek modern look. The colours pop of each page will be from the photos of that article so the colours and photos all merge in to one.

The magazine will be printed on A4 using a matt uncoated paper and will be 70gsm. This will keep the cost down and make it more accessible to people.

 

Research and survey

We carried out a survey on Survey Monkey at: http://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/XDDWB8S and was taken by 43 people. This was to give an idea of what our target audience would want to see from our magazine.

 

The Competition

Current travel magazines like Food and Travel and Wonderlust tend to focus on expensive luxury holidays and dining experiences that is not really attainable for 18-30 year olds who are just starting out in working life.

Food magazines like Olive, Good Food, and Delicious also are aimed at the higher end of the market with the foods that are featured and the chefs that are interviewed.

The magazines in both food and travel sectors tend to aim towards to ABC1 demographic with a higher income. They are possible for millennials to read but more as aspirational than attainable. TEAL intends to show experiences that are possible for anyone living on a budget.

The competition for online food and travel websites is huge with a mix of both professionals and bloggers meaning there is a flooded market to do with food and travel. However the magazine will help bring in brand loyalty with the cross-platforming elements of the magazine to the website. They will promote each other to make the readers be interested in both aspects of the brand.

 

Social media and online content

With the target reader ­being so active on social media, like the survey shows, there needs to be a high presence on social media. The website and social media platforms will follow the same philosophy of the print magazine but they will include multimedia pieces including video.

The social media will include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

YouTube will be the main format for video productions. These will have longer, in-depth videos about travel destinations and recipes. Shorter recipe videos with just background music will appear on Instagram and Facebook, as this is more common for these formats.

The website will host more recipes than the magazine. From the survey we found that the readers will go to Internet for recipes more than a magazine or a cookbook. So there will be an archive catalogue of recipes both in video and written from.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter will be mainly used to push out content from the website and video platforms. Instagram will be heavily used but focus on just food and travel aspects with minimal captions that just give a snapshot of a particular place or food.

 

Circulation and readership strategy

For the first three months of the brands life there will be no print magazine. There will be an emphasis on online aspects and building up a relationship with the readers though social media and the website. After the three months the magazine will launch. This will mean that people will want to buy the physical magazine as they already have loyalty through the website and social media.

We aim to have a circulation of around 33,000 within the first year of the print magazine being published. The magazine will be sold in the newsstands.

There will also be a cross-platforming strategy by using the print magazine to promote the digital and the digital to tease content that will appear in the magazine or provide a different format to a piece in the magazine through a multimedia production. Promoting each other like this will make the reader engage with both digital and online articles.

 

Brand Extensions

The brand extensions for TEAL will mainly be a show that will be held annually that will cover both food and travel aspects.

Speakers we will choose if they already have a fan base so that they can drive people towards the show; this will include bloggers or high influencers on social media. This will mean there will be both TEAL readers and those who follow the speakers who will bring more people to the brand.

Over first few years, after there have been a considerable amount of recipes and travel locations featured, there will be development of a food and travel book that feature the locations and cuisine explored in the magazine in more depth.

 

Subscription

There will be a subscription service available for readers that will offer the magazine at a cheaper rate with a complementary digital download.

Time frame Price Price Per Issue Discount
6 months £9 £1.50 40% off
12 months £15 £1.25 50% off
24 months £24 £1 60% off

 

Advertising

The advertising will be a split between middle to high price products. The majority of the food and travel related adverts will be more at the mid-ranged price with travel companies or websites like Air B&B or hostels. As well as food companies such as Tesco or supermarket products being featured as well.

However we will target higher rated items to do with technology such as cameras, phones, and laptops, which are an expense that millennials are willing to pay out for. We also aim to keep the adverts gender neutral as the target market involves all genders.

The high-end advertisers will want to advertise because it will help people become familiar with the brand so even if the reader cannot afford to pay for those products they would be aspirational products.

There will also be advertising in the website and through sponsorship deals to promote and review products or destinations on social media.

 

Indy PR1 and online journalism project

This is a piece of work that I mad in my first term of my masters course and this is all about the independent shops and restaurants in Preston. Me and my course colleague Sam made this project together.

We worked on elements together as in the Twitter and the blog but there are parts which we separated out to deal with separately. So I did the Instagram, Pinterest and the Vine page as well as the pieces on the blog itself.

This was a very important project to do as it made me learn how to manage different social media for a long period of time. The brand and the tone of the pages and social media needed to be consistent though out so there was a lot of collaboration between me and Sam to what we were working on.

indy-pr1-logo1

The Instagram page worked really well as it had a mix of both shops and more artsy pieces that worked on the medium. Hashtags were so important when doing this page and keeping the local people engaged with the content.

Pintrest was more difficult because this was more about curating the work of someone else rather than uploading the photos myself. This would have worked better with a different subject but it had some engagement from the other pinners.

This was my first experience with using Vine and I found it very easy to get to grips with as the format is very simplistic. It worked very well on its own but when I curated the pieces together to make the piece about the ‘Top 5 independent coffee shops’ which used the Vines that post took off and was shared a lot.

The Twitter was used mainly to much out content but also keep up to date with the things that were happening around the city by re-tweeting different new articles and local opinion. This was also a way to showcase some of the infographics that I created such as this Thinglink or this infographic.

Some tweets were put up in advance to keep in with set events like “Shop Small Saturday” which was around the time of the project. Using TweetDeck meant that we could control when tweets went out to keep content moving.

Finally there was the blog posts. Each week I did a Instagram round up to highlight the photos of the week. It was also a good way to bulk out the blog as there was only two people but this is the round up of these posts and those can all be read on the blog.


Links:

Blog: https://indypr1.wordpress.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/indy_pr1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indy_pr1/

Vine: https://vine.co/u/1278497945502797824

Pintrest: https://uk.pinterest.com/indypr1/

There was also a Snapchat however this was one of the sections that Sam made himself.

Creative Freelancers

This was the first group magazine that I did on my masters course. This is the one where I was editor and in charge of the group of people and was responsible for making sure that each person was on the right track for the magazine.

This one was based around freelancers who are in the creative industry. We saw that the creative industry as a whole according to the reports from the government said that the industry was on an increase. Combined that with the amount of freelancers the creative industry employs and how freelancing has no real community and is very isolated so we made this magazine.

The main articles which I wrote for the print magazine was:

Carving a niche in the wedding industry – how to become part of a £10 billion industry as a freelancer

The best business cards – a breakdown of the right business cards for you on the market

How to make it on Google – SEO and the basics of being found on the internet.

There was also an online element as well which you can see below and I was also responsible for writing the media pack which is in a PDF below with the full magazine.

When reading the magazine my articles have bylines but I also designed several pages and worked on design in general as well as writing the three articles and managing the website. @adresses to the other members who worked on are in the contents page of the magazine.

 

PDF of magazine: Creative Freelancers

PDF of media pack: Media Pack

 

Website: http://ukjournalism.co.uk/magazines/2016c/

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cfmag_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creativefreelancermagazine/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBcenqrsncrLtFl8MzkUQvQ

Millennial Man Magazine

This is Millennial Man Magazine which is a magazine that I made through a group project. I was the digital editor and the links to this are down below to all the social media.

I am very proud of this magazine and all the work that went in to it. The first magazine had a few issues but it is proof that the longer that you work with a group of people the more that you get to know their working style and can make something great together.

The idea for the magazine was about having a magazine that spoke to millennials because they have either been ignored by the magazine industry or seen as people who only want to see nudity and read rude and sexist content, like the lads mags of the 90s and early 00s.

So the aim was simple a men’s magazine that was inclusive and intelligent and I honestly do feel that we as a group achieved that.

For me the main part of the online editor role that I took on was about organisation and to keep the website have content up on it at all times to keep it fresh and relevant.

The two main articles I worked on for the print magazine were:

Men have boobs too: a look in to male breast cancer and how it is a heath risk that men should be aware of.

Video game tourism Assassin’s Creed: travel to the places of the AC franchise this summer.

When reading the magazine my articles have bylines but I also designed several pages and worked on design in general as well as writing the two articles and managing the website. @adresses to the other members who worked on are in the contents page of the magazine.

 

Magazine PDF: MILLENNIAL MAN

Travel Layout Designs

These are a few examples of travel layouts for a magazine or newspaper.

All images or graphics I made or took myself. I used InDesign to create the pages and Photoshop to edit any photos and create the graphics.

This design is based off the Sunday Times ‘Great British Breaks’ articles. This one also has the full copy in the layout. The graphic at the bottom I designed using photoshop and was in the style of The Sunday Times maps.

Chester Final

These next few are designed and use filler text for the story.

The first is form Albufeira, Portugal. The key was to have the beautiful relaxing beach as the focal point and give an overview of the feel of the town using the side bar of different images.

Albufiria Layout

Derwentwater piece focus is the panorama shot at the bottom. Using such a large image can mean that the text is lost through the picture so using two columns and making the text very blocky mean that the text is not lost in the image.

Derwent Water

This DPS of Venice I feel would be a typical weekend travel piece with the entire right hand page being full of photos to give a good fell for the place and the left hand page being full with text.

Venise Layout

%d bloggers like this: