Magazine workshop

Red Magazine Website

This week in lesson time we had a chance to practise creating a magazine cover for a lifestyle magazine. All lifestyle magazines deal with what Foucault developed as the idea of “technologies of the self,” the tools that supposedly make you a better rounded person and working towards self actualisation, as expressed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

I had a go at recreating a cover for “red” magazine.
“Red” is a lifestyle magazine aimed primarily at women in their thirties. Accordingly the magazines contents reflect the issues that are expected of women of that demographic. On the cover I used as a reference, from June 2005, there was a guide to a summer body. The picture that accompanied the headline was of a young woman in a bikini leaping in the air. This implies that if you follow the magazines 14-day guide you will have this models figure and confidence. I set my issue as the January issue, thus giving me the potential to use the self consciousness of my target audience in the post Christmas/ New Year resolutions season. At this time of year most people are aware that they have spent a fortnight over eating and drinking. It’s no coincidence that adverts for diets, gyms and exercise regimes are at an all time high in January, close second being may and June for the pre summer regimes.

It’s this vanity that magazines like red exploit and reinforce effectively to sell their issues. They make it seem that they have all the answers to the reader’s questions that can help on the road to self actualisation.

For my cover I played on the insecurities that women are told to have in relationships. My stories on my cover include “Get Him: How to get your ideal man” and “Keep Him: How to stop him leaving,” though more blatant perhaps than the average header the content will have been repeated in countless issues. Women’s lifestyle magazines such as “cosmopolitan” and “Women at Home” fill their issues with quizzes on how to be a better partner, how to please their men sexually and gastronomically. Despite allegedly supporting the independent woman, these magazines portray a reliance upon having a man in their lives and being a part of a “healthy,” “normal” relationship.

My cover star is a young woman in her mid twenties. Magazines regularly use models younger than their demographic in order to increase the readers’ insecurities and sell more issues. Particularly effective when selling anti-ageing products or articles. I expressed this in my cover. “167 anti-age must haves.” 167 may seem like a random number but it lends itself to making the reader believe that the article is all encompassing. If it was 150, or 200, the reader may think that the writers reached that number and stopped. However 167 means that the writers must have really tried to write as many options as possible, they reached 150 then had a few more to include. It makes the reader feel that the magazines producers are trying their hardest to help.
Rule one is that media is a business, as a media producer Red magazine has to sell units. Its best way to do so is, through interpellation, connecting with its audience directly. To become its readers friend. Including stories that play on women’s insecurities and promising quick fixes (14-day exercise regimes) and answers (“how to keep your man?”) means that “Red” becomes the readers oracle, the magazine becomes the person who the reader turns to in times of crisis and can find comfort in reading other people’s problems.

To me these life style magazines are all about Maslow’s hierarchy. In men’s magazines you can read “how to pick up women” or “mix the perfect cocktail” in women’s magazines it’s “meet a good man” and “how to cook the perfect roast dinner.” Magazines reinforce the expected modes of speech, dress codes and behaviours that have been in place for generations. If you can perfect your cocktail stirring, fashion sense, chat up lines or culinary techniques you are that much closer to self actualisation and living nirvana.