Planning Work- Magazine Proposal (College Magazine)

My magazine will be aimed at college students, between the ages of 16-19. This will be a college publication so it makes sense for my target audience to be students who use the facilities on a regular basis, and gain the most from the magazine.

My publication will essentially be about college life, and tips for students. There will not be a huge emphasis on the college itself, although some news will be included. Instead of trivial, bits of news regarding the college, I will include the actual interests of the students. These will range from fashion, and clothes, to the latest movies and games. I am hoping that by focusing on these rather than news it should appeal more to the student.

I have decided to name my magazine “Switch”. I chose this name because I think it best summarises the purpose of the magazine, to switch the student away from the fast pace of college, and to just take a break and read up some of the latest news reflecting their interests. I rejected a few ideas prior to deciding on this one, such as “Represent” and “Break”. I did not choose these because I didn’t think they were quite as memorable as “Switch”, and the titles are not as snappy. There are also several connotations with these names that I didn’t think reflected the magazine to its intended purpose.

For a tagline, I had several ideas. I finally decided to go with “Everything the student wants and more”. This summarises exactly what the magazine is, a variety of pop culture and college news mixed into one.

The magazine will be released termly (spring, summer, autumn, winter). This so there is always lots of new content to put into the magazine, and students may feel more willing to pick up a copy since it only comes out at these times.

Since this particular publication I design will be winter term based, the colour scheme of the cover will consist of a range of darker blues and a slightly de saturated image.  The cover image itself will be of myself, as I wanted a student to be on the cover since this is the target audience. In order to save time, I took it outside my house in order to get the brick background, and this way the background of the cover is still reasonably clear and the taglines/masthead will not clash.