Start of Studio Brief 3: Physical project: Audience Considerations

TITLE

Reductress Publication

BACKGROUND

Reductress is an online satirical women’s magazine that takes on outdated and condescending opinions towards women from popular media through the eyes of female comedians. The work is publicised on a website and seeks to be published in a physical publication to reach a larger audience.

BRIEF

Produce a physical publication for Reductress. It should direct more towards a zine and reflect the satirical tone and nature that the articles on its website reflects.

DELIVERABLES

A zine.

MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS

Must include the articles published online by Reductress. Must be engaging and humorous to appeal to audience attracted to the online magazine.

RESEARCH AIMS

To reflect the tone and focus of Reductress in physical print and to explore how you can produce a complimentary print to a digital platform

-          Ironic floral logo on website, so on zine it could be very digital logo. Could keep flower logo part for consistency

Audience considerations 

• Basic demographics - age, gender, income, religion, nationality, ethnicity
• Behaviours - shopping habits, hobbies, work/life balance
• Psychographics - attitudes, values, personality traits
• Geographic - where they live/work/socialise (eg in Leeds = elements of Leeds culture in it)

When will the audience comes across my project? How will they interact with it? 

eg. if they go into newsagents, make a magazine that looks like it would be on a newsstand 

Visual Research 

Graph determination between luxury, affordable, younger and older consumers. 

TUTOR FEEDBACK
- How am I going to subvert it 
- Do I need to look at audience. If I've found that most Feminist magazines are aimed towards 20 year olds and older and are around £7-£12 then the audiences are mostly the same. 
- How would it work in context (student magazine or insert into more mature magazine?)
- Where would I get the content from? = the blog 
- What is the function of making a magazine = entice readers, educate them and make them aware of news/ideas/critiques 
- Satire focus of blog Reductress to be displayed and continued in the physical print version I want to make 
- Look at Private Eye Magazine: satirical periodical: could the Reductress insert be in a satirical magazine such as this? 
- How will I choose to sell or promote the magazine/zine? Is it about the volume of it? = could be an insert?

- BENEFITS of creating a physical print version of the blog:
long-form articles 
features 

- Am I recreating the articles in a satirical witty way like Reductress that will appeal more to a younger generation, 18 to 25 year olds. Would make it cheaper in order for the content to reach this younger audience (more £2 than £7) and place it in places they would be likely to pick it up, eg. Belgrave 
- Would there be workshops like Reductress hold but for students in the student union?
- Would this concern body politics or aspirational branding? 

- Might wanna look at how Reductress make their money = As traditional magazines make their money just from advertisers and sponsors, having a blog means expanding into other areas to ensure funding, eg. podcasts, a book, merchandise. These things that surround the brand are important aspects of what creates their identity. They branch out into so many areas that the audience they attract have a lot of things to look at and be entertained by. 

(Also a red, white and black theme as Reductress? But I feel people that read these satirical periodicals would not be the preferred audience to read a print version of Reductress blog. If I were to choose the insert I think it would have to be in more of a big, luxury women's magazine). 

Two ways of going about it: 
1. Create insert sleeve for feminist magazine/satirical magazine (eg. private eye) for the original audience of the blog (20 years old and older). Use the articles from the blog. 

2. Create new articles to go into mini magazine to appeal to younger audiences that would be placed in eg. Belgrave for cheaper (eg. £2) 


COP tutor follow up conversation:

- Stick with existing audience (not for students but for 20 year olds and older) 

- Insert as idea 

- maybe needs to be a really highly designed artefact as the website is not aesthetically pleasing 
- needs to create appeal 
- what is the opposite of the feminist luxury magazines that I should avoid? 

- if an insert it needs to be affordable 
- looks like luxury but its actually really cheap?

There is definitely less of a photography element within the more affordable zines compared to the more refined, mature magazines - It may be that the photos within the more affordable zines are simple not as interesting or as well taken as those within the magazines for an older audience. 

I want to integrate a variety of elements within the print, hopefully illustrations and drawings for a playful element, and then strong use of type and photogrpahy to give it that mature aesthetic. For interaction between the reader and content it was also suggested in the peer critique that I could have quizzes or cross words inside, but I think more of a different approach for interaction is necessary for the print to have a more indie and mature message, eg. period pad picture spread across two pages and reader told to draw on period blood. This works with the red theme. 

Initial Ideas:

- looking at inspiration on Pinterest of various red and white themed editorial work and zines really drives me towards using textures as a way of diversifying the pages rather than using colour = eg. halftoning. 

- This quick example does not show the standard I want the work to be at but shows an idea of layout and type (sans-serif and bold). The 'Draw an unattractive moustache here' text would be more of a hand drawn element and would not be so rigid within the layout. 

As I was cutting out small abstract red shapes for the initial idea presentation of the red and white colour scheme (as suggested by peers after looking at the colours used in the Reductress website), I realised the small abstract forms could be reflective of the petals in the flower symbol in their logo. I had wanted to put these sort of red shapes onto the design as it would show the type of aesthetic I want to go for in the magazine/zine, but found that these could actually be used for design consistency across the pages in different and interesting ways = large as a solid fill for white pictures, or small for decoration. 

The shape created in the piece of paper they were cut from was also interesting to look at in terms of an insert publications cover design. Part of my essay talks about how print magazines have to try even harder these days to stand out amongst the endless online free magazines available. One of the methods that have started to appear in print magazines is die-cutting or simple stencils. This could refined and made into a proper sleeve to hold the insert. It would abstract the flower symbol in the Reductress logo and give it a more modern aesthetic, one of my aims for the project.