AICE Media Studies Blog

Essence magazine was made specifically for African American women which covers the most recent beauty, fashion, entertainment, and culture trends. It was first published in 1970 and has continued its journey for over 50 years to empower these women and boost their confidence, and decrease the stigmas that go along with being a black woman in todays society. On their website, they explain that "Essence communications is the number one media, technology and commerce company dedicated to black women and inspires a global audience of more than 20 million through diverse storytelling and immersive original content". So with over 20 million people subscribed in some way to their magazine, they obviously are going to have a very diverse distribution model. In 2013, Essence posted an article to their website that introduced the new app that would soon be available to iPhone users. They increased their distrution to app stores because although they already have millions of individuals...

L' Officiel magazine is a French fashion magazine and was started in 1921, who targets higher class women from around 25 to 50 years of age. The magazine is owned by the Jalou Media Group who in 2017, published multiple articles stating they they were proud to be "debuting the international digital platform" in the US. They continued to exclaim that their US office was going to be " a fully integrated digital newsroom offering consumers international coverage of high fashion, accessories, art, travel, and lifestyle." They also stated  that there would be over 40% of American based content, and over 60% of it covering international beings. So given that they created an entire office in America based on their digital content, that is a main portion of their distribution techniques. Their main 2 offices are located in New York and LA, and explained that the New York office with be focusing on the web- editorial aspect. The Los Angeles office is where they will be f...

Harper's Bazaar is exclusively a women fashion magazine and considers itself to be for the "women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture". They have a grand total circulation count of over 765, 490. Surprisingly enough, nearly all of their subscriptions and circulation is through print rather than digital. As most of their personal digital media is various articles on current things they're discussing, they explained that a majority of their subscribers prefer to have the physical magazine in their hand rather than looking at a phone screen to read and flip through all the photos and things they're showing. Individuals just simply prefer to be able to quickly flip through to look at the images and tend to read less about the articles rather than just seeing it as a more adult version of a picture book.  This is the screenshot from their website showing just how surprisingly different their distribution is from what someone would normally imagi...

The traditional magazine distribution model includes what you would see as an old school paper boy delivering their newspapers by tossing them onto yards while riding by on their bike except with a magazine, it is the news stands you would see in a grocery store or on the New York City streets. If you were waiting to check out in a grocery store line, they tend to have the little stands on each side of the aisle that are filled with candy, gum, and magazines of all sorts. The most eye catching ones are probably the gossip ones that include TMZ and all the latest insider celebrity news, but they have all sorts of them ranging from cooking to fashion. Like I said before, they are either most commonly at a small stand at some time of checkout counter, or you see them at the newsstands that have physical papers on a street in a big city. The way that I would use this traditional distribution model would be to strategically get places to subscribe that fall into the fashion category. The be...

V Magazine is a fashion magazine that has been around since 1999 and had the addition of a specific mens edition in 2003 merely 4 years after they published their first volume. Their original target audience was both men and women but had the creation of the specific mens only portion in 2003 to make sure that they were getting even coverage of each gender. They are most well known for staying in the know with current fashion, music, art, and film trends. They are generally considered to be geared towards the middle to upper class; especially people who are finding themselves to be attracted to more artsy type things. They consider many of their subscribers to be interested in art, culture, and photography which include some odd things that most artistically inclined people would probably enjoy. Surprisingly enough, they actually have more male subscribers being at 54% compared to the female subscribers which is 46%. They have an average age range of around 24- 35 which is relatively s...

When looking at how other magazines market their product, I noticed a common theme of how all the major fashion magazine labels have social media accounts where they post photos of some new styles and items that they found to be trending. They all advertise products that pertain to fashion and beauty who are all aiming towards the relative middle to higher class who enjoy to shop and keep up with current trends and who focus on the way they look and take pride in presenting themselves in a way they are comfortable with. Outside of just the clothing and shoes aspect of fashion, they like to show accessories like hats and jewelry and bags and such things. Another aspect especially geared towards women is the makeup and self care. They show things like lotions, and mascara to promote the idea that self care is the best care and its the best solution to feel good about yourself outside of material beings such as clothes and shoes. A lot of the social media accounts showcase these type of p...

W magazine is considered to be one of the more high end fashion magazines such as others such as Vogue or Cosmo. W focuses on younger women who are interested in higher end fashion who you can normally catch shopping at places like LuiV and Gucci. Most of the products that they show in each volume of their magazine showcase different extremely high end fashion and beauty pieces. These vary from items such as clothing and shoes, to accessories like hats and purses and different types of jewelry, or beauty items such as different makeup pieces or haircare and skincare tips to add into these women's everyday routines. They try to appeal to the young to middle aged women of all ethnicities and cultures who want to stay in the know with the most recent trends and who want the newest of everything as soon as it comes out. Their subscription numbers are over 457,000 not counting the people who look at the magazine with no subscription. They have an entirely digital basis of their magazine...

Vogue has over 80% of their readers being female and around 20% of them being male. While females are obviously reading much more than men, they still base their content on things that could potentially interest both genders, therefore gaining more attraction from a wider group of people. Over 86% of their readers are from the ages of 16 to 44 years old. This is extremely similar to my target audience as I stated that it was for younger adults to people in their forties. similar, 48% of the readers of vogue buy clothes or shoes at least twice a month. As I said before when discussing my target audience, I stated that I was aiming my magazine to people who were truly interested in fashion and enjoyed shopping which is precisely the crowd that Vogue is attracting as well. They do this through hosting some of the largest fashion shows, and have maximized their brand to such an extent that they do things such as produce tv commercials incorporating videography of certain fashion shoots tha...

Given that my magazine is a fashion magazine for a plethora of different groups of people ranging from 2 years old to about 40 years old, it mainly focuses on gearing its products towards adolescents, teenagers, and younger adults. The main focus of having information on children as young as 2, is so that adults who are interested in getting fashion tips for their children are able to look towards my magazine and get their wanted information there. I am gearing the information posted in the magazine to surround both males and females of those age ranges so that we have a broader consumer based environment rather than just focusing on female or male fashion alone as some other magazines do. The social class or income level of the individuals are going to be from the lower middle class to the relatively wealthy. I want to promote fashionable clothes that are not as expensive as Saks Fifth or Gucci so that they are affordable for the average person who likes to take the occasional trip to...

Today in class, our teacher taught us how to use adobe InDesign to help layout our magazines. I pay to have all of the different adobe programs but I mostly just use Photoshop and Illustrator; I had never heard of the InDesign before. Since most of the adobe programs function and basically work the same way with some minor differences, I was able to pick up how to use it pretty quickly. I'm actually really glad he showed us it because I had previously used Illustrator to put together my two page spread, but Indesign made it a lot easier. He showed us the basic functions of how to insert spaces for pictures and how to create columns for the article and fix the margins to our liking. It makes it a lot easier to put in pictures and to add in the article which I really appreciated. I think going into the third quarter,  I will be using InDesign to do some revisions and to re-layout my pages because thats specifically what the program was made for. I think overall it will make things mo...