In this process, I went into the field and asked my peers about what my magazine should look like and include. I posted the google form on my Instagram account and asked my sister to post it on her dance account (which is my target audience). A total of 102 people filled out the google form and my results are included below.
What should the title/headline be:
I wanted the headline/name of my magazine to be a dance term in French to fully embrace dance. "Pose" means the movement in which the dancer steps into any desired position, "Beat" means a difficult jump, "Coda" means the finale of a group of dancers, "Finale" the end of a ballet, "Royale" means when a dancer jumps in the air and mid jump they switch their starting leg, and "Attitude" means when one leg is in the air and the other is on the ground. I personally love "Pose" because it reminds me of major dance magazines like "One" and "Pointe". Since the second favorite of the sample was "Attitude", I will consider the top two, and they are my favorites. I am going to choose the headline once I actually start designing my magazine, to see which one fits and looks better.
What types of fonts should I use:
Text on the cover page is very important to catching the readers eye. Personally I believe in variety of sizes, just like my audience. A variety helps the designer to pick out important information and highlight it. I am very excited to use variety of sizes because I can manipulate the cover to fit around the dancer in different sizes.
Who should be on the cover:
In the general conventions of dance magazines, usually, one dancer is on the cover page. About 60% of people chose to have one dancer on the cover page, which is the normal for dance magazines. I want to go against the general trend and have 2 dancers on the cover page to get the message across of being unique but depending on how it looks when I am designing the spread, I might go with one dancer.
What should the style of the cover page be:
I included the style of cover page just to see what the audience likes when they look at the cover page. Personally when researching, I found dance magazines that had minimal text and enjoyed looking at it because the text did not take away from the dancer/model. Although, the people taking the poll overwhelming picked medium amounts of text. Depending on how it looks when I am designing my cover page, I will decide between medium amounts and minimal text (the second highest choice).
What editorial features should be included:
I am honestly shocked that a specific dancer was the majority chose for the double page spread. With the current events going on in the United States, I would have thought that impact of racial differences would have had the majority by a landslide. I also thought that COVID's impact would have been voted on more than college talk. I will most likely going to combine a specific dancer and impact of racial differences because they are the majority percentage.
What location should the pictures be taken in:
The definite majority turned out to be in nature which I was praying that it would be. I have not seen a lot of modeling done in nature for dance magazines, which I am very excited to go against the trend. For nature, I am going to have to choose my location wisely because I do not want my background to be too crowded with distractions.
What color schemes will be best:
Agreeing with the majority, I was leaning towards neutral and warm colors because it will compliment all different types of skin colors. I am also liking the idea of including blues, purples and some pastel colors so it creates a airy but very powerful look. I am certain that I will include neutral colors but also blues, purples, pinks and darker colors which will be spread through my magazine.
What should the style of clothing be:
What I enjoy most about dance magazines is that their is no set type of clothing that is commonly used. Depending on the issue and the dancer being featured, the outfits change every month. The overwhelming majority was leotards which I was hoping would happen but dancers tend to have two pieces too. For my models, I am going to let them choose what outfits they want pictures of and depending on how the pictures come out, that is when I will decide on what type of clothing will be on the cover page and rest of the magazine.
What should the gender of dancers be:
I was curious to see with the changing of times and how dance has evolved whether people would want to see both genders or just one specific gender. Both females and males were involved in the polls (the majority of females taking the poll) and I was surprised that the overwhelming majority chose both female and males. That is exactly what I wanted because dance is becoming more gender neutral.
