Research summary

After carrying out my research for the preliminary task, I found a lot of useful information about the interests and expectations of my target audience which will help me design my magazine to appeal to them. By analysing school and sixth form magazines, I could get ideas from the designs, style and language used to appeal to certain audiences. I found that most school magazines are aimed at parents rather than students but sixth form magazines seemed to connote maturity which would appeal to older teenagers who are aspiring to be seen as young adults rather than teenagers. Sixth form college magazines such as Dave would appeal to older teenagers and students with its 'busy' cover and vivid colours. I also found that many of the magazines that I found came from white middle class institutes but have an absence of ethnic representation and so I designed my magazine to cater for other ethnic backgrounds. Most students would prefer their school magazine to contain a variety of general topics on the interests of teenagers rather than just school information which seems quite formal and uninteresting for teenage students. 

I also used questionnaires for my target and focus group to find out more about the interests and hobbies of teenage students. Generally, teenage girl's main interests included fashion, music, gossip and celebrity news while teenage boy's interests were focused on sport, music and computer games. Girls generally read more magazines that teenage boys and so I will try to design my magazine to appeal to boy's interests also to encourage them to read the magazine too. I will incorporate all of these ideas into my magazine so it appeals to all sixth form students.