This document is a mind map and research for a student's ancillary product of a TV magazine front cover. It discusses the inspiration source of an existing soap opera magazine and outlines ideas for the new magazine cover's masthead, headlines, cover lines, pricing, and inclusion of social media links. The student concludes they will take inspiration from competitors and organize photo shoots to create the main cover image, designing the final product in Adobe Photoshop.

1. OCR Media Studies – A2 Level
Unit G324: Advanced Portfolio
Mind Map and
Research
Name: Feargus Bracken
Candidate Number: 4009
Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic School
Center Number: 64135
Generation of Ideas for Ancillary Product 1) –
TV Magazine Front Cover

2. • Published in - October 1992
• Initially monthly when published, then every fortnight
from 1995, then it became a weekly published magazine in
September 2003
• Published by – Hearst Magazines UK
• Circulation Figures –Price range – £1.60
The pricing establishes that the target readership can be
anyone who has enough disposable income to afford a
expense of under two pounds per week, which creates a
diverse potential range of audience. With such a low pricing, it
is possible for working class families with little disposable
income to purchase.
Circulation Figures 
Source of Inspiration
Mind Map
Source: http://www.abc.org.uk/Products-
Services/Product-Page/?tid=2137?

3. Mind Map
Name: Feargus Bracken
Candidate Number: 4009
Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic School
Center Number: 64135
Masthead Ideas
• Strong, bold colours that contrast
with background causing the
masthead to become noticeable.
• Masthead must contain reference
to Soap Opera to appeal to target
market.
• Weekly Soap
• Annual Soap
• Soap Watch
• These Mastheads would be
similar to my magazine of
inspiration, Inside Soap
• The Masthead would be located
towards the top of the page, and
the main image (if it overlapped)
would be beneath it in a different
layer.
• The main headline will be for my
soap opera, Merland Rise.
• It will be formatted similarly to a
InsideSoap headline.
Main Headline
• Due to my soap opera being new,
the magazine would not rely
more on character names. The
title would bear more
importance than individual
characters.
• There would be a puff or another
headline that would support it to
create more content and hype
about the new soap.
• Merland Rise – On The Rise
• ‘Mad Max’ - Shoots Shannon.. Or
Does He?

4. Mind Map
Name: Feargus Bracken
Candidate Number: 4009
Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic School
Center Number: 64135
• The main headline image would be a image of all 3 main characters in the story arc covered by the
trailer. The Cover Lines would be backed up with images from the related soap opera’s/characters.
• Depending on the content and which soap opera a coverline is referring to, the content could be
colour coordinated.
• The language used in straplines would be friendly and relatable to a soap opera audience. Phrases
would be eye catching in form of colour and layout.
• The price would be similar to the pricing of other magazines but partially to attract customer
attention. The price will be £1.50, which is lower than the price of InsideSoap which is £1.60,
• Puff promotion will be done in the similar format used in straplines, which would be bolded with
colours denoting which soap opera the puff is promoting. Featured text would either be in the puff
itself, or placed next to it if the puff contains a image.
• There will be various social media icons and links in a part of the cover that would otherwise be
white space. There will be icons for social media sites such as twitter and facebook along with the
@account name.

5. Mind Map - Conclusion
Name: Feargus Bracken
Candidate Number: 4009
Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic School
Center Number: 64135
• For inspiration, I could look online for covers of InsideSoap (as this is free, rather than
going out to buy a copy).Due to small expense of purchasing these magazines, either
option is feasible as it is not very expensive.
• As opposed to looking at just InsideSoap, I can look at its competitors such as What’sOnTv
to see how soap opera magazines differ from their competitors, and if there are any
features or conventions that I can exploit.
• I will need to organize timing and equipment for photo-shoots needed to attain the base
material for the main image, which will be edited in Adobe Photoshop CS5. The cover of
the magazine will be created in Photoshop CS5. I will use Photoshop CS5 as the magazine
itself can be created in Photoshop and fonts can be downloaded to provide more visually
pleasing aspects of the magazine cover.