Analysing a children's magazine

Brands Eye: In the Night Garden

I've put together all the pages of the magazine into a slideshow which can be accessed below:

Core Proposition: "Let's have fun!"

Brand Personality: -- Full of fun games and activities involved (stickers, Iggle Piggle toy phone and crayons to be artistic).

Target Readers: Toddlers interactions are made through pictures hence there aren't as many texts on the front cover (compared to a magazine such as Elle). Therefore, the parents/guardian becomes the target reader because they are the ones who will be buying products for their children hence the attraction needs to be carried along to them too.

Says about you: A child/kid who spends a significant amount of time watching this show. Someone who is artistic when it comes to coloring on a page. Someone who likes reading short stories would also love to buy this.

How does it make you feel: 

-Feel artistic when coloring wherever it is needed

-Enjoyable magazine

-Creative side comes to life

What do you perceive: A nice, simple and short story is added. There are several different activities to be done.

Benefits:
There are many creative activities:

-Children's get to be artistic by coloring a page or two on the magazine

-Reading is generally good for people, especially young kids as this improve their English.
-Learning the numbers is good as it improves young children's basic Maths knowledge.

Front Cover

 The picture above shows the front cover of the magazine 'In the Night Garden' which is a children's show featured on Cbeebies, bought from Morrisons. 

Why/how does the design appeal to the chosen audience?

• Straightaway the most distinct feature about this front cover is the use of colour palette. The colours are rich and vibrant filled with all the eye-catching primary colours there are. This magazine has used all shades of blue from sky blue to royal blue. Seeing the colour blue actually causes the body to produce natural chemicals that are calming which is great for kids as their childhood is all about being playful and energized. I have claimed this statement from a research that was made on the internet about the meanings and/or associations of various different colours. This is the specific website: https://precisionintermedia.com/color  

• The presentation is quite playful not only due to the colour scheme but also because of the split on the front cover. We as viewers are able to observe all the characters there are in the animated show when uncovering the left-hand side of the split page. 

• The first thing that really caught my eyes in comparison to the rest is deep, dark colours used to present one of the main cartoon character -Upsy Daisy, published in a huge size.
• The second most noticeable feature of this particular magazine is the name of the show (In the Night Garden) written in white coloured font which placed in a little, royal blue leaf shaped text box to be fit and compatible with the theme of nature. The name of the font appears to be the biggest font used in the front cover indicating the need for recognition at first sight and also to showcase the significance. 

• The fonts consist of simple and small sized texts which may cause one to be confused at this element merely because, on a children's magazine, extravagant fonts such as bubble writing are commonly used. However, in this case, it goes against this typicality. The reason for this being is because the customer is clearly going to be an adult who purchases it for the consumer who is the children. 

• The presentation of the layout is very well-suited for young kids as it displays an understanding of what young children engage well with and what they find most appealing + eye-catching. Furthermore, the writing style fits the parents need to be able to read not only the front cover to decide if they want to buy it for their children but also be able to read aloud the pages inside to help the toddlers understand as generally, at such a young age most do not have great knowledge just right at this point in terms of reading and speaking fluently. 

In order to analyse this particular magazine in more depth, I have put together a target analysis within a table format which can be seen below. 

Product Analysis

Price	£2.75
Advertisers	A children’s magazine – The Furchester Hotel which include great gifts and lots more.
Reader Interaction	Iggle Piggle toy phone, plenty of stickers and crayons.
Promotion & Competitions	·         Hands Up! – A special campaign which encourages children to learn about friendships and how to get along with the people around them. The competition requires a child’s outline of their hand to be drawn on the page, therefore, they can design it however they want. This then needs to be sent for a chance to win an IPad Air. ·         To be in with a chance of winning 1 of the three In the Night Garden bundles; it requires the child or rather the parents to tell the organisation what colour Iggle –piggle’s blanket is. ·         A promotion that is included inside the magazine involves an issue which was on sale on 16th September. With this, there was a free Makka Pakka (this is one of the characters of In the Night Garden) toy bath set along with ‘lots of big stickers’ and ‘special bedtime pages’.
Content	This magazine includes a page full of stickers that are to be stuck in the right places, on the right pages. There is also two pages worth of short story that can be read at any time by the parents or the children’s themselves.

Market Segmentation

Demographic	*Not suitable for children under 18 months because it may not be of any use if this was to be purchased specifically for them.
Geographic	No specific but mostly appropriate for toddlers who generally love to watch this programme in the UK.
Benefit	There is a chance of grabbing a voucher to get into Chessington World of Adventures resort for free, only entitled for kids.  Toddlers would have several creative activities to do. Kids often like to show off what they know hence this is another benefit of buying this magazine.