Genre Research: Teen Vogue

Since deciding that I would make a magazine, I have ruled out the prospect of a food magazine because I do not like photographing food. Instead, I will be doing something within the realm of teen life (maybe a style magazine, maybe a study magazine, possibly a combination). One of the genres of magazine that I am looking into is a teen style magazine. When I think of this genre, the first magazine that comes to mind is Teen Vogue.

Teen Vogue stopped selling print magazines in 2017, but their website continues. According to the New York Times, Teen Vogue's distribution peaked in 2005 with 1.5 million copies globally, and had declined ever since, but now their website claims to have 11.6 million users.

     

Pictured here is the cover of the December 2016. From the second to the eleventh page is exclusively ads and then four pages for the table of contents. Out of the 121 pages, I would say over half are ads.
     
The photos in the table of contents act as a type of "click bait" for their most politically charged and interesting pieces. 

The magazine is not nearly as superficial as I remembered (I used to read Teen Vogue in elementary and middle school); instead, it has lots of interviews from young female professionals. It also has sponsored look books and ads in between almost each page of content.

In all of the images, the colors are bright and contrasting, which catches the eye. The most common color I've seen has been pink- in the cover and in every image thereafter. On article pages, there is an outline on each page. On the image to the right, the article is outlined and the outline says "Social Studies"- the topic. The article also uses bold letters and varying font sizes to help keep the attention of the reader.







In all, the magazine was very interesting and fun to read. It had an incredibly wide range of topics, from  politics to clothing to how to fix your credit score. Reading this magazine made me realize that for my magazine, I may want to have it be on a wide range of topics, but keep it within the realm of student life. I really like the idea of an outline outside of the article, so I will definitely be doing that, but with a much different aesthetic.