AICE media studies

 This magazine, Business Travel Magazine, targets employed adults that are interested in, or need to, traveling for business purposes. This is different than other travel magazines I have done research on because others are for people that are going to be traveling for leisure, not work. This magazine does have similarities to mine as well because they both target adults that will be travelling. Business Travel Magazine markets their product to small and medium sized enterprises and distributes to over 18,000 readers by print media. Knowing that the adults that will be reading their magazine are going to be employed, The Business Travel Magazine will distribute their magazines near companies or communities of middle to upper class. When I distribute my magazine, it will have to be around communities of middle to upper class as well and also schools knowing that adults with kids will be around that area.  

The Family Traveller Magazine is one that is very similar to mine when it comes to target audiences. Family Traveller targets adults who are interested in going on vacation for leisure. They target adults who are families and may be travelling with children. My magazine, Getaway, also should be advertised to adults that are parents with children. In their online media kit from 2018, Family Traveller includes that they reach their audiences through news stands and subscriptions. They use both online and print media. Having this variety is important when distributing products to make sure that everyone can have access if they are interested. Because Family Traveller targets adults with children, they know that they most likely know how to use computers and could easily navigate a website with their magazine. Since my target audience is the same, making a website for my magazine as well would be a good idea.  

West Coast Families Magazine has a target audience of families, parents, kids, grandparents, etc. Their magazine is not focused on travel like mine is, however, they do target the same audience of families as mine does. West Coast Families Magazine markets their product by advertising to mothers, fathers, grandparents, educators, caregivers, and more. They have around 600,000 readers on print and thousands more online on a digital copy. They make the print version available to pick up at over 600 locations across the west coast. I would use similar aspects to market my product. I would have a print copy available for pick up at select locations and also offer an online digital version.  

In class I learned how to use the software Indesign for making changes to my magazine pages. I originally was using Publisher to create the pages for my magazine. Indesign has many similarities to Publisher making it an easy transition for me to learn. There are some differences in the softwares and that did make some changes more challenging for me. An example of this is the various options of styles and layout, with Publisher I was more limited with options. After working through making one page with my administrator I am deciding to continue using Indesign for the rest of my project. I believe that it can help me get my project to where I want it to be.      

My travel magazine, "Getaway Travel", is targeted towards anyone interested in travel. The audience of travelers will be adults, such as young couples, families, or couples ages 65 and up. The magazine targets people traveling for leisure more than business because of its many tourist destination spots listed throughout the magazine. Since the people will be traveling on vacation and leisure, they are most likely to be planning their trips months in advanced as opposed to within the month. These people would most likely be coming from northern states or other countries. This is because Getaway Travel is based around Florida spots to travel to and it is common for northern states to be attracted to beach scenes and warm weather. The target audience needs to have a stable income in order to travel to the places advertised in Getaway Travel.

The final revision I made after getting feedback from my class was on the table of contents. The first change that I made to the table of contents was the background color. In the first you can see that I had a pink background to match a color scheme. I changed that to be white. The reason for this was because I believe it looks more professional and also for printing purposes it is more conventional. I also added descriptions under each of the article titles to inform the readers more. When I did this I had to change the format a bit. I kept only one photo and made it bigger in size. Then I shifted around the headings.

After my midterm submission I got feedback from my teacher and peers. My group mate and I got together to make a few revisions of the front cover. We needed to collaborate to make our covers more similar. We decided to change the title from "Getaway Travel Magazine" and shorten it to "Getaway Travel". I also needed to made adjustments to the picture on the front cover to make more space to place text. I ended up changing the picture on the cover to a different one. I went downtown again and took more pictures. This time I focused on the composition of the photos. My goal was to get a picture of the downtown buildings as a skyline with space at the top of the photo where I can put the text for the cover without it covering up too much of the picture. I believe making these changes made the cover more simplistic and easy to understand for the readers.

After consideration of the conventions of a magazine article, I decided to revise mine. The first draft of my article is in the form of one large paragraph. I decided I wanted my article to be displayed in columns to keep the attention of the audience as they read. When I made this change, I kept the same article content as I had previously and created text boxes that where more compact and in columns. I also added a page to my article to make it two pages. I included two new pictures on the additional page as well.   

After considering the conventional designs and layouts for travel magazines based on my research, I reflected them in my own creation of a travel magazine. The front cover of magazines are typically simple and contain little information. On the front cover of my magazine, I listed a few of the places talked about inside the magazine as a preview, but did not go into detail. Also, travel magazines especially, have plenty of photos throughout the pages. When I took a photo shoot for my magazine I made sure to have various options of pictures to choose from for my pages. My magazine is for people who are interested in travel and more specifically travelers who enjoy city scenes.