Magazine Planning Blog Post #5a: Style Guide

 Target Audience

To start off my style guide, I want to have a clear understanding of my target audience. The target audience of my magazine will be mostly women who have a taste for unique fashion styles, unoorthodox clothing, and bold fashion statements about social issues. Moreover, the target audience will be those who have adept experience and knowledge about women's fashion, and how it has morphed throughout the ages. Not only that, but the fashion choices will not only be adhered to women, but men as well. I believe that fahion is compeltely androgynous, therefore any fashion choices, which may seem a bit more feminine, can still be expressed by the opposite gender

Defining Brand Voice

I will build my magazine off the brand style of Vogue. They use minimalist practices in their overall voice and tone, which align with the values of their minimalistic but higher echelon fasion. I think this will greatly communicate my magazine's overall personality, and the brand message. Another aspect I want to keep in mind is my brand tone. The tone is the way my brand message is conveyed, and I want to convey it through different fashion choices, presentations and styles, by which will portray healthy fashion lifestyle choices, as well oppose any unhealthy fashion choices,

Format

The format that I will closely follow and be inspired from is the Vogue formatting. The titles are bold and unique, not conforming to conventional magazine formatting. which is much more formulaic and bland. The different coverlines meld together with the images, presenting a melting-pot of beautiful textography and photography. This allows both to be a single entity that conveys the outgoing and minimalistic personality of the Vogue magazine. Moreover, the font is recognizable, and contributes the trhe brand's identity as a whole. The use of accent colors, as shown with the bold red "Vogue" and red in the image, portrays a seamless look that is streamlined and pleasant to the eye to view. The jargon used is also minimalistic; the coverlines aim for much more concise descriptions of each feature article, without omitting any type of important information that is needed. 

Photo guidelines

I will also be inspiring my work off Vogue for their photo guidelines. Their photos usually play hand-in-hand with the textography. The text wraps around the photos, drawing more attention to the photo, as well as making the formatting much more concise and uniform. Moreover, some of the tet overlays on top of the photo, which add depth onto the textography and photography of the magazine. The photos usually take up the most space in the magazine, but do not take away from the information attached to the magazine. Photos are also taken in a way that melds into the design of the magazine; for example, the background of the picture in the clinique advertisement matches the background of the magazine, which immerses the image into the magazine without the visible borders of the photo. 

Reflection 

I think researching on how to layout a basic outline of the style guide is important for creating a magazine. It creates a backbone that the creative process can fall on, and ensures that the creative process is coherent and seamless. Moreover, learning the appropriate style guide for a women's fashion magazine is important for conveying the correct message and purpose that falls upon the audience. It ensures that the message can be correctly interpreted and have a meaningful impact for the audience, which is the main aspect for my magazine brief.