Evaluation - Appealing to audience

"How did you attract/address your audience?"


My target audience are both males and females (though mainly males) aged 16-25 with a strong passion for indie music.

Cover:

My front cover was the most important part of my magazine in addressing the audience because of it being the first thing they will see, and the thing that will be most successful in catching someone’s eye. Therefore, keeping this in mind, I tried to stick to simple conventions of an indie genre magazine that would appeal to the right kind of audience.

  

One of the first things that the audience can see when looking at my front cover is the masthead, which I have placed in the top left corner following conventions of other indie genre magazines. It is important for the masthead to be one of the first things the audience see’s because then they know the name of the magazine. The masthead is in a red and bold font and also the largest so that the audience know it is the title, just as other indie magazines, which makes it look more professional and addresses the audience because it’s a slight hint to what the genre of the magazine is. The next part of the cover that is also one of the obvious things that the audience will see before anything else is the picture of the band which has been placed exactly in the middle of the page following the route of the eye. This is placed in the centre to address people who may listen to the band’s music and so it is important in whether people are going to be interested in buying the product or not. The boys are looking straight into the camera which also gives the effect that they themselves are addressing the audience. The layout on my magazine is ordered, making it look more mature and for an older audience. I achieved this by placing coverlines around the picture, and the band name in the centre under their faces. The next thing that the audience see is the ‘kickback’ logo, this is in yellow because in my research on other indie genre magazines I found that yellow is quite a common colour to be used on an indie genre front cover so once again I was following classic conventions. It also gives variety to the cover page, making it look more exciting which will appeal to the young audience. At the bottom of the page I have placed a list of band names on one corner which will be one of the last things the people will see on the cover, this tells the reader what other bands will be featured in the magazine and is one of the things they will consider in their decision to buy the product. In the terminal area is where I have placed the price in a small font, as this is something that we don’t want the audience to see first as it will convince them not to look at the magazine, however as it is down here it is the last thing on the page they will see and they will then know that it is worth it. Across the top and bottom of the page are some bold coverlines also that are along the route of the eye, and will address the audience who are into these sorts of things such as the festivals. I only used a small range of fonts on my front cover as I didn’t want it too look too cluttered and wanted it to have a simple effect. I kept the colour scheme as black and white with red mainly but also used a bit of yellow to follow conventions and make the magazine look more fun, enticing the audience. 

As you can see, 30% of participants that took my survey rated my front cover as 7 out of 10, 20% rated it as 10 out of 10 and the majority of people voted it as 7 or above. Showing that my magazine is relatively appealing to the audiences eye. 

Contents Page:

My columns are separated well into columns as we see with the principle of thirds, this separates my information from each other to avoid confusion to the reader, it also gives the page a neat and ordered layout which will appeal to the audience without boring them. At the top of the page placed in the centre, along the route of the eye, i have used my masthead again which is a convention that i took from other magazines such as NME and Q. This reminds the audience what magazine they are reading and it also adds some boldness to the page as we can imagine it would look quite plain without it. I have placed the contents column on the right hand side of the page, the articles are quite essential in enticing the audience because they are telling the reader what to expect within the magazine, therefore this is important because it's the readers decider of whether they're interested in what's inside or if they're not. One of the main things that is going to stand out most on the contents page is the main picture in the centre of the page, this would appeal to different audiences because she is female, it would attract the male gender as it's not very common to see a female in these types of magazines and it would also appeal to a female audience because they may look up to the artist and aspire to be like her. At the bottom of the route of the eye i have placed a subscription box which would appeal to the audience because they can see the types of offers that the magazine has for subscribing and they would also notice that the magazine has a website, as well as this there is the picture of the front cover which reminds them again of the front cover so that they don't change their opinions too much on opening the magazine to the contents page. I have used text such as "The moment.." and "This week.." on my contents page as it is a good way of catching the audiences attention as they want to know what it would be relating to. I used the same colour scheme that i used on the front cover to keep the magazine stable as completely changing the colour scheme would look too much and probably repel the audience as well as confusing them as it would seem like a different genre. The colour scheme is a convention of indie genre magazines which i have kept. I used red on the masthead and band index so that the page didnt look too over the top, the rest of the text i left black to maintain the black and white colour scheme. 

As you can see i've had very good feedback for my contents page as 40% of people rated it 10 out of 10 which shows that i have been very successful in appealing to the audience with my contents page. 50% of people overall gave the contents page 6 or above. 

Double Page Spread:

The double page spread is the main article in the magazine so this is relatively important as it will be the main feature appealing to the audience. For my double page spread i decided that following the conventions would be vital in making sure the audience don't get bored. Keeping this in mind, i used the left page for the text and the right page for the picture and fact file. The picture takes up almost the whole page and it is probably one of the first things the audience will see. This is also successful as it means that all the text will be on one side making it easier for the audience to read and also making it look as though there isn't too much text. As you can see the route of the eye goes through all the images on the page, as well as the title and it goes straight through the centre of the text, meaning that the route touches upon all the majorly important factors on the spread. I have kept an ordered and non-cluttered layout throughout the spread because this way it makes the spread look much neater as well as making sure the audience don't get confused. The text i used is all very small so it's important to keep it clear, i did so by formatting the questions into a different colour as well as making the kicker bold. I used a different colour scheme to the rest of the magazine as i have used blue rather than red, i did this to break up the magazine a bit and make it seem more interesting and exciting as keeping it the same throughout the whole magazine would no doubt bore the audience. It also gives a theme to the article as well as associating the colour blue with the band featured in the magazine. I have used three different pictures across the spread, using one of the band together as the main image and using separate images of the band members to make them seem as individuals as well as a band, i have added captions to each of these images. In the photos, they wore colours that stick with the colour scheme of the magazine as they are wearing black and grey coloured clothes. 

I got relatively good feedback for my double page spread, as you can see the majority of people rated it 8 out of 10 and 90% of people overall rated it 6 or above showing that i have produced a successful double page spread.

In the question above, you can see that 60% of people that took a look at my magazine would be interested in buying it, which gives me a good idea of peoples opinions on it and also shows that i have succeeded in appealing to the majority of the audience.

The print screen below is also from the results of my survey, i have had a good response from the audience as the majority of people (30%) said that they rate my magazine 10 out of 10 over all meaning that i have produced a successful indie genre magazine, however 30% also said they would rate it 7 out of 10 which would give me an average of 8.5 out of 10.