Evaluation Questions 4-5

4.    Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my magazine would be both male and female, probably ranging from about thirteen to twenty. I have tried to use both female and male models in my magazine so that I did not restrict my audience. The reason I believe my audience will start at the age of thirteen is because pop music tends to be very lively and nearly always catchy, from the videos I have seen and the pictures of pop music artists, they tend to lead very exciting lives, this will be noticed by the audience and is a very catchy thing.

5.    How did you attract/ address your audience?

When creating my magazine and looking at other pop music magazines I found that they were colourful and vibrant, I therefore took that and did the same with my own. Using bright colours would help me to attract an audience, such as teenagers.

 I believe that I would also have an audience of people in their late-twenties because my magazine shows sophistication, which is shown through my double page spread article and catchy tag lines.

The layout of my magazine, especially the contents page, is also sophisticated in that it is quite simple and broken up well. Initially I wanted the background to be white, with colours down the side, however unfortunately I was unable to do that, so using the same grey-white fade  as my background with simple black, red and white, I believe has helped me to widen my audience.

 As you can see in this front cover example of ‘Q’ Magazine, they use the colours red black and white, and I felt that each of these colours complement each other on the page and help each other to stand out off the page. This is why I chose to also do this colour scheme. The black, white and red colour scheme is also culturally learned from the symbolic semiotic. This is because magazines such as ‘Q’ and ‘NME’ also use this colour scheme, therefore the audience will notice these colours and relate them to more well known magazines. I also chose my image carefully, It took me a number of attempts to find an image that I felt worked well as a front cover image. My image is an eye level shot, this has helped me with making my audience feel connected with the person in the picture, as the image is not too close up it also gives the audience more of a chance to see the artist which I hope gives the impression that they know more about her before reading the magazine. I also felt that it was appropriate to show different camera angles throughout my magazine, as this would show understanding and also would help the audience to see different images and keep the magazine interesting.

A you can see by my double page spread I have kept it very simple and effective, this is so that it is not over complicated and readers would not find it too busy and unattractive. I did not want my audience to feel bored by the article, but I also did not want it to feel crowded and busy.

Here is an example to compare with the image on the front cover, this is a high angle shot which is looking down on my music artist.  This image is on the contents page and therefore I wanted to demonstrate use of editing and colour, so I edited this picture into black and white and adjusted the shadows and brightness.

I also used things such as an issue number and date, barcode and website. This has helped to attract the audience  make the magazine seem more professional and realistic.

On my double page spread I used informal chatty language which I feel will be useful and attractive for my readers. The uses and gratifications theory on information is relevant to my double page spread as it is informing my audience on information and facts they may which to know about the topic I was writing about. The tone of my double page spread is informative yet relaxed, it is telling the readers what they wish to know and yet still keeping them interested. The language and words are simple which I felt was sensible yet may be slightly stereo typing teenagers in the way that they may be less inclined to read an article if it was made up of formal language and large complex words.