Blog 5 - Mocking up front cover using audience research

Individual responses:

Here's the link to my survey:

https://www.survey-maker.com/QPREVIEW

Regarding the questions I have asked you in the survey, how useful do you think they were?

Looking through the positive responses from my survey, many people gave a range of different answers that would suit their interest and style. Before this, I had difficulties building up ideas for my magazine cover. After people have given their responses, I think it really increased my creativity and I will now have a better understanding in what type of magazine I want to promote.

My original ideas:

At first, I was going to use pastel colours instead of using bright, bold pigments.

For the style of the font, I wanted to go for serif fonts, since that style of the font was already used in newspapers and all sorts of books and magazines. Instead, I came to the conclusion where I wanted to make my anime magazine more original and my own style. So, I had a change of plan with my previous ideas, by changing the style of font (serif to sans serif), and changing the colours from pastel to bright and bold.

Blog 4: Magazine ideas (Planning)

My magazine title:

WeebEmojiTV. (A Japanimation website, where you can play games, discover new anime adventures by completing quests/tasks, read anime magazines for any news updates. You can also watch/listen to your favourite anime clips and anime tips you can follow by).

Target audience:

Ages 12+

Cover lines/Image types/font and colour scheme/Background image:

For my cover lines, I have included 'Time to travel behind the scenes', 'All the entertainment from this guy', 'Tutorials on how to become an anime master', 'Complete all tasks to win a free voucher and access all our best quality features', 'WeebToon' stuffed toys inside!', 'READ NOW'. I went creative with this one, because I want my magazine to look more original and more adventurous in the specialist community.

For the image types of the front cover, I have included the logo for my magazine, because I want it to look more understandable for the audience and to match the title.

Furthermore, for the font and colour scheme, I went from serif font, to sans serif font. I didn't really want to use the serif fonts, since it's more overrated on digital and print magazines. Plus, they have more style varieties of sans serifs than serifs.

For the colour scheme, I went with the anime culture, by adding pastel colours for the front cover, by using (Pastel blue and pastel yellow).

For the background of my magazine, I want the audience to understand what kind of magazine I'm doing, for them to take a hint about what they are about to read. So I'm going to be using a background that sets the anime culture, with it being based in a town with colours around it.

Blog 3: Circulation figures

Circulation figures in the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association

The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association reported on Tuesday that Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump dipped in circulation beneath two million. The average circulation number for March (2017) period was around 1,915,000.

The manga magazine's circulation suddenly fell by about 91,000 from the December (2016) period when it was about 2,005,833. It was the average circulation number for the July to September period, which was less than one third of the magazine's record circulation of 6.53 million in (1994).

The circulations of Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine and Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazines unfortunately did also fall from January-March (2017). Weekly Shonen Magazine's circulation decreased around 22,000 from the previous period to around 964,158. Weekly Shonen Sunday's circulation increased about 3,600 to around 319,667.

Moreover, The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association reported in (2015) that circulation in all three magazines had suddenly dropped by more than 10% in the previous year. Although JMPA reported that Weekly Shonen Jump rose slightly in circulation in (2009) and (2010), Japan's manga magazine circulation has been reported as falling since at least (2006). Weekly Shōnen Magazine's circulation dropped below two million in and below one million last year. JMPA previously noted that each company is putting effort into digital publication, which may account for part of the decrease in print circulation.

The chart below shows the circulation numbers for all three magazines beginning with the January-March (2014) period.