Design a new magazine aimed at teenage boys

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I was briefed to design a new magazine aimed at teenage boys, as they are a notoriously hard group to target. They have a disposable income and so are very appealing to advertisers combine this with the fact that they are a seemingly impossible group to widely reach to they are a golden fleece to advertisers. There are very few magazines aimed exclusively at the teenage boys age group, as they do not buy general interest magazines, and are more likely to just buy magazines about their hobbies like bikes, movies etc. Recently 2 magazines, Nuts and Zoo, have been launched targeting the teenage boys audience and have done quite well. I decided to research Nuts before I designed my own magazine.

Nuts was launched in 2004 and since then has built up quite a large readership for a weekly magazine. With a circulation of 275,459 and a readership of 1,174,000 it seems to have effectively targeted the teenage boy market. It is published by IPC media, who also publish Loaded, Pick Me Up and Wallpaper magazines. At the time I am writing this the cover story for Nuts is “Street Strip: real girls get their kit off”. From this I can see that it uses informal language to talk to the reader, and foes not patronize of look down on them. It appeals to the high hormone levels of teenage boys, with soft core pornography and erotic letters. The layout is BIG titles, lots of pictures and bright colour’s, a very basic, but effective way of grasping the reader’s attention. By studying this magazine I decided that my own magazine should not be highbrow, and should appeal to the inner caveman of every man or boy.

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When I started to create my magazine, the first thing I had to do was think of a name. I went through several options, but eventually decided upon BVN, a name which is easy to remember, but isn’t clichéd like Nugget or Locked. For a cover story I decided to go with an interview with Kristanna Loken, a sexy Hollywood actress with enough fame to get attention, but not so big as to object to photo shoots that would appeal to my target audience. After deciding on these too aspects of my cover, I designed my tagline which ran at ...

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