Magazine Research 📝🔍

  Here's the research for my magazine

REFLECTION: This research really helps me the reason on why some elements are created and applied to a magazine. For example, they made the left-third of the cover pages to hold the most necessary information needed such as barcode, price and the date issue of the magazine and to be the most eye-catching as possible in the eye of customer. The reason is because they rest part aside from the left-third will be covered by other magazine and competitors. This research also helps me to introduce me to media contexts and debates, enhancing my reasoning in my exam. 

This is an example of a magazine shelves in your local supermarkets. On these racks, magazine companies compete, even paid grands, to get their strategic place on putting the magazine so it'll appears more obvious and stands out. Ideally, they would place it to be seen in the POV of their targeted audiences, hence the normal position for all magazines should be eye-level depending on the person. I have performed research on a magazine front page, and I've searched many pictures of magazines on a shopping rack. It concludes that some part of the magazine would surely be covered by other magazines, the most common part that would be covered is the right part of the front cover. To make the magazine still looks interesting and obvious, company takes incentive to design the left third part with more efforts to make it interesting even without the covered part of the magazines. Overall, I will still design my front page as neat as possible. But I may put more efforts on designing the masthead and the left-third part to make it more obvious and this can be done using simple-memorable typography, yet brighter simple font-colors.

Mabua Harley-Davidson Indonesia

Publisher: PT Mabua Media Indonesia

Mabua Harley Davidson Indonesia is an Indonesian-released magazine published by PT Mabua Media Indonesia. It features stories about people who are interested in the motorbike or people who're formerly a part of the community. The purpose of this magazine is to advertise the company and encourage people who feel related with the biking-community, thus expanding company reputations and increasing brand images.

MEDIA LANGUAGES

The general conventions for an automobile magazine always highlight their vehicles while making it to appear big, dominant, and epic yet clean and taken care. Harley Davidson magazine conform this as they've use low angle on picturing the motorcycles that appear in the front page, making the effect of dominance and to make things appear bigger. In contrast to other magazines, this magazine sees the motorcycle as a friend compare to others that portrayed the automobiles only implying it's a "vehicles", but in this magazine the motorcycles are portrayed as the  "friends" of the rider. This can be seen by how the rider dressed, relaxed and informal. Another proof to confirm it is the present of other motors and rider, creating the sense of crowd and relations. The use of "bro" or "gan" (bro in Indonesian slang) strengthen the denotation concept of friends, strengthen the previous argument.

REPRESENTATIONS

Harley Davidson have been portrayed, even stereotyped, as a big and loud motorcycles along with it's rider wearing black parachute jacket, denim jeans, and black sunglasses. If one tries to imagine the bike, it would always comes up with the Cruiser categories ranging from the Breakout, FatBob, FatBoy to Heritage Classic types. On the front page, it conforms this as we can see two middle age man riding the Breakout types but the clothing kind of subverted from the stereotypical Harley riders. The reason for this might be to eliminate the bad stereotype that appears when people imagine the black-parachute jacket riders that are always linked with gangstar or gang members, by showing lighter color of clothing creating an effect of light or brightness which related to good, purity, friendly, and happiness.

AUDIENCE

The identified target audiences for Harley Davidson are men above 35 and also who're happen to be cruiser-bike enthusiasts. According to Gratification Theory, Harley's consumers would consume this magazine to fill their needs for Social Relationship or Personal Identity. People who bought this magazine would expect their position as a motorcycle rider in the society or forming a social relationship with their related peers who are also to be related with the same topic. The way this magazine engaged customer is by directly shows the motorcycle picture, which are the main topic of this magazine, and it is expected that the one who are targeted are motorcycle lovers.

INDUSTRY

This magazine was freshly made, and it is the 4th anniversary of Mabua Harley Davidson Indonesia Magazine Edition, and they stated that from this edition they will keep releasing new magazine every month from then. This is a goodway to keep the content updated and more sensitives to current news, latest trends and the recently available hot topics that were being discussed. However, I can't seem to find the website version of it which considered as a weakness for today's media. As people needed to wait a month or more to get the updated version (not counting the hiatus and the delay on releasing the magazine) and they have to go walk up to nearby store to get their hand on the magazine, which are not practical for nowadays as everything are now done digitally. This would discourage the people's desire to buy the magazine if they keep publishing the magazine offline.

EDISI KEEMPAT; BESALEN BUDAYA - KERIS NUSANTARA

Publisher: Dinas Kebudayaan Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta

BESALEN BUDAYA - KERIS NUSANTARA is an Indonesian-released magazine published by Dinas Kebudayaan Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta (The Yogyakarta government). It features a story about a famous craftsman and a famous keris as well as the discussion of misleading concept from the commoner towards keris due to biased judgement and also a way to counter it. The purpose of this magazine is to act as a surveillance or information provider for those who got interest in this topic.

1. Genre = Cultural - Weaponry, Rituals

2. Demographic

Age: Middle age man (30+)

Gender: Primarily targeted for adult men

Location: The magazine is located, made, and sold in Indonesia

Ethnicity: Javanese, Balinese

Income: Middle-High Income

Education: Not specified

Star Appeal: -

3. Psychographic

Hobbies and Interest: Collecting and owning Keris

Lifestyle: Cultural influence around Traditions, Sacred Rituals, etc.

Spending Habits: Spend money to buy an antique Keris or to made the Keris by themselves

4. Uses & Gratification : The magazine is used for Surveillance and to engage in Social Relationship

 5. Further Analysis

Masthead/Title	The masthead/title of the magazine is BESALEN it has a straight meaning for blacksmith in Indonesia according to Indonesian Dictionary. This straightly suggest that the magazine will cover anything related to weaponry.
Typography	The usage of less colorful fonts and the Arial typography implies a formal meaning, the Arial typography is a general convention to formal documents in all around the world.
Image	Then, the image of the Keris genuinely supports the masthead/title. This further specify that the magazine covers the topic of weaponry, especially Keris related.
Language	What is the strapline? What does it suggest about the magazine and the reader? What rhetorical features are evident in the coverlines?
Representation	To what extent does the image conform to the conventional representations of men/women/celebrities etc?
Adverts	No ads to be seen in the magazine

Griya Asri Sustainable Green House, 2013 Edition

Publisher: PT. Griya Asri

Here is a link to my Double Page Spread research + development

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7569015299785980062/3830374538861754342