Planning- Moderators report

• The target audience was specified as a culturally sophisticated, 16–25 age group, class AB demographic. 
• At least four different images using original photography across the covers and contents; a different setting for each cover; at least two models representing at least two different social groups; a call to action pointing readers to the website. 
• The stronger magazines chose their fonts with discrimination (not relying on standard body-text fonts to create sell lines or the masthead) and showed control in terms of size and leading. The best work used a variety of images on the contents, with page numbers on the images anchoring them to the written contents, and appropriately laid out and sized text.
• Many of the magazines constructed representations really well, with subtle but thoughtful differences around nationality, class, aspiration as well as ethnicity and gender. Some of the most interesting work questioned issues of normative gender stereotypes.
• Magazines which were more lifestyle than fashion (including, for example, cover features on cars or sports stars with no fashion context or a fashion element which seemed to have been ‘shoehorned’ in)
• Magazines where the front cover image was either a medium close up or a close up of a model’s face and so had no focus on fashion. Where candidates' photographs did not specifically address an AB demographic this could have been achieved in the cover-lines and contents, for example focusing on high end designer fashion
• Contents pages which duplicated text, stories or imagery/ models across both issues
• One or two magazines did not include the price (or a barcode) on the cover, despite the brief stating that the product was to be sold by retailers
• Magazines where excellent front covers were not matched by the quality of the contents pages; for example, no sub-headings, limited use of images, little/ no copy, no use of columns or use of a wide variety of fonts, inconsistent column structure, too much white space, very little in terms of actual written contents, font sizes which were overly large in order to fill the space. All of these demonstrated a lack of understanding of the codes and conventions
• Several sets of magazines did not refer to the fact that these were supposed to be the first two editions – this was a requirement of the brief.