A magazine is a printed enterprise as its main aim, coming above all else, is to make money.In order to get the potential buyer to buy their magazine, the publication needs to do three things:
1. Attract
2. Entertain
3. Inform/Educate
If the magazine doesn't attract you in the first place, which it does with the front cover, you wont buy it! The front cover is critical in this respect, and layout is the crucial makeup of the front cover, as it makes it pleasing to the eye and sells the publication to the potential buyer.
Your average customer will walk into a store like W.H.Smiths and skim through the pages of a magazine related to a genre they believe applies to their interests and hobbies. Step 1, Attracting the customer, has been completed. Step 2 is what urges the customer to consciously believe what lies within the piece of media they are holding will entertain them for the flight, their dinner break or the train ride home.
Entertainment drawn from your publication and given to the customer can come from a variety of different places as they skim through the pages. These bits of entertainment are the titles of articles, pictures and information laid out on the pages before them.
Informing, or educating the customer is a mental box they need ticked in their head in order to buy the magazine. The act of reading is seen as educational when compared with something like watching a soap opera so the customer feels far better about purchasing the magazine if they feel like they will have gained something from it.
In my next post I will discuss layout and its huge importance when designing a magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment