Publisher of recently launched magazine- ‘Perfect Woman’ claims that it is aiming at the modern, discerning and sharp focused woman of today. Perfect Woman is the new entrant in the genre of magazine for woman in India which is launched by GGC Ltd. as a monthly magazine.
Indian market is already flooded with many Indian & foreign titles like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Femina, New Woman, Woman’s Era, Elle, Good Housekeeping, Verve and many more. Amongst them, few are fighting to be on top and couple of others are struggling even for their survival,. In that kind of competitive scenario, it becomes even more challenging to come up with an extra ordinarily brilliant product to capture a remarkable market share for you.
Content
The market of woman magazines in India is getting wider everyday and that is why each woman interest magazine has to be positioned absolutely smartly whether it would be a general reading magazine for women or it is going to be fashion magazine or a shopping magazine or home making or some other special interest magazine for women! It can’t be just another carelessly positioned magazine.
Though, ‘Perfect Woman’ is a general reading (i.e. anything and everything related to women world) magazine so it has all the areas to include bollywood, fashion, travel, celeb talks, beauty, life style, entertainment, art, cooking and what not…!! And in order to include everything, it became just a mess. It happens in many of the cases if editorial team is not sharply focused on what they have to put and what they have to reject in the issue. The issue of Perfect Woman just looks like a collection of all kind of articles in order to hook its target audience in any of its article.
The issue looks very shallow in terms of content density because individual article are not presented in structured manner. All articles look very blend and fail to make you feel contented after reading. Language and editing part of magazine is also not impressive.
Design
If content is poor or it is not rich in terms of its focus, structure and gravity; it becomes very difficult to lift that article by design only. And, in this case, situation is worse. Perfect Woman seems as if it is designed 25 years ago. The typefaces, colors, body copy font, text sizes & leadings, the page layout… everything is so old fashioned and dull that it does not go with the positioning of this magazine – a magazine for a modern woman.
There is no design guideline followed in the magazine for sure, because every page has its own style for layout, column width, font, body copy font sizes, leadings, other design elements, lines, borders, corners, boxes, frames, back ground colors…!
Poor quality of photography, poor cut outs, badly paced images and very carelessly edited & cropped images are fail to make it a nice presentation. The way design elements are created and used to layout a page, clearly shows the lack of professionalism in this publication. Many of design elements are just introduced on the pages without any value. They clearly are not adding any value to the article nor in esthetic of a page, but are there just randomly. Overall design in entire magazine is undisciplined.
Printing
I say it often, a final product is a result of many steps involved to reach there and if some goof ups happens at any of initial levels, it has its cascading effects and it becomes almost impossible to make up at its next levels. If content is not focused and if design is also immature, it becomes very difficult to make it an impressive and attractive article at pre press & printing stages. And, unfortunately with this magazine pre press work is also gone for a toss. Many pages has registration problem and that is why pages have color problem and images are printed badly.
Not a single image is printed in its real or original color. On some picture red color is heavy, in some picture it has yellow cast or magenta cast.. as the result pages are looking horrible. Dark images are printed in flat black and showing no details if it is a product of dark color.
Product
Being a monthly magazine, it should have more content to justify its periodicity. In same genre, on the other hand, competitive magazines are giving content of somewhere 200 to 400 hundred pages per month. This magazine consists of average 100 pages and is priced at Rs. 60. Magazine is printed at normal paper which is perfectly bound and has a glossy cover.
Still, it fails to justify its price mainly because of less and poor quality of content & its presentation.
Indian market is already flooded with many Indian & foreign titles like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Femina, New Woman, Woman’s Era, Elle, Good Housekeeping, Verve and many more. Amongst them, few are fighting to be on top and couple of others are struggling even for their survival,. In that kind of competitive scenario, it becomes even more challenging to come up with an extra ordinarily brilliant product to capture a remarkable market share for you.Content
The market of woman magazines in India is getting wider everyday and that is why each woman interest magazine has to be positioned absolutely smartly whether it would be a general reading magazine for women or it is going to be fashion magazine or a shopping magazine or home making or some other special interest magazine for women! It can’t be just another carelessly positioned magazine.
Though, ‘Perfect Woman’ is a general reading (i.e. anything and everything related to women world) magazine so it has all the areas to include bollywood, fashion, travel, celeb talks, beauty, life style, entertainment, art, cooking and what not…!! And in order to include everything, it became just a mess. It happens in many of the cases if editorial team is not sharply focused on what they have to put and what they have to reject in the issue. The issue of Perfect Woman just looks like a collection of all kind of articles in order to hook its target audience in any of its article.
The issue looks very shallow in terms of content density because individual article are not presented in structured manner. All articles look very blend and fail to make you feel contented after reading. Language and editing part of magazine is also not impressive.
Design
If content is poor or it is not rich in terms of its focus, structure and gravity; it becomes very difficult to lift that article by design only. And, in this case, situation is worse. Perfect Woman seems as if it is designed 25 years ago. The typefaces, colors, body copy font, text sizes & leadings, the page layout… everything is so old fashioned and dull that it does not go with the positioning of this magazine – a magazine for a modern woman.
There is no design guideline followed in the magazine for sure, because every page has its own style for layout, column width, font, body copy font sizes, leadings, other design elements, lines, borders, corners, boxes, frames, back ground colors…!
Poor quality of photography, poor cut outs, badly paced images and very carelessly edited & cropped images are fail to make it a nice presentation. The way design elements are created and used to layout a page, clearly shows the lack of professionalism in this publication. Many of design elements are just introduced on the pages without any value. They clearly are not adding any value to the article nor in esthetic of a page, but are there just randomly. Overall design in entire magazine is undisciplined.
Printing
I say it often, a final product is a result of many steps involved to reach there and if some goof ups happens at any of initial levels, it has its cascading effects and it becomes almost impossible to make up at its next levels. If content is not focused and if design is also immature, it becomes very difficult to make it an impressive and attractive article at pre press & printing stages. And, unfortunately with this magazine pre press work is also gone for a toss. Many pages has registration problem and that is why pages have color problem and images are printed badly.
Not a single image is printed in its real or original color. On some picture red color is heavy, in some picture it has yellow cast or magenta cast.. as the result pages are looking horrible. Dark images are printed in flat black and showing no details if it is a product of dark color.
Product
Being a monthly magazine, it should have more content to justify its periodicity. In same genre, on the other hand, competitive magazines are giving content of somewhere 200 to 400 hundred pages per month. This magazine consists of average 100 pages and is priced at Rs. 60. Magazine is printed at normal paper which is perfectly bound and has a glossy cover.
Still, it fails to justify its price mainly because of less and poor quality of content & its presentation.
Overall, The Perfect Woman magazine is just ‘me too’ kind of magazine in the genre where already Indian market is flooded with brilliant products. I feel that the magazine which is made for this audience is not as trendy, focused and contended as its target audience is, as it is claimed. In this situation it seems very difficult for this magazine to craft its own space and to hold its readership.
3 comments:
Thanks Virdi for the another update in the magazine world.
I guess one needs to diffentiate between women and girls. And I am sure this segment is not targeted as it should have been. I remember as a kid bumming my aunts women’s era magazine just to read the agony advice column.
The girls segment which I am talking off is the teen (14-19) offering up-to-date advice for tween and teen girls on the latest fashion and beauty, music, movie, TV and celebrity. Stories, crafts, advice, and so much more
The women’s magazine articles on makeup tips, hair care, hairstyles, skin care, women's health and pregnancy & parenting.
I guess we are clubbing both the TG and making a hash out of it.
Bring on more pal
absolutely right Kaiser bhai...ek dum sahi!
I sometime wonder whether these publications understand the funda of product positioning? They see their TG in the light of binary state only- Male or Female...thats it! All females for them are their TG..and they try to serve from a 15 years to 55 years age group, from a house wife to a business woman or a working executive, from a cosmo lady to a B or C class town woman...!
And then after running the magazine for 10-12 months they start finding the reason for their failure!
i Don't understand the that type of publicity method in which a successful person photo attach over their cover and then try to attach that with the common people lives.
Rahul
Ajnara Homes
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