Audience research is alway a tricky part of the creative process as often students don’t have the time, skills or resources to do it thoroughly. A quick way of doing it for established magazines is to simply look at the type of adverts that have – this should be (if the media buyers are doing their jobs correctly) representative in terms of brands, hobbies, media consumption of their readership.
This is what we did to build a readership profile for Total Film and Little White Lies.
Resources & links to advice on mag design 