Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?


I think that the cover is the most crucial part of my magazine in drawing in and generating audience attraction, I created a cover with a simplistic but stylish appearance, by including only limited information I was able to draw audiences attention to both the masthead and my star cover image. The artist on the front cover represents a young popular indie/alternative singer, wearing a camo green bomber jacket with medium length styled hair, a generic indie/alternative singer appearance that mimicks current popular singers of the same genre, therefore attracting audiences to read the magazine. My mast head is centred at the top of the page in a large bold font that is unique as it has the appearance of a water blur running through the centre, this contributes to the overall stylish effect that as I learnt from my audience research, is popular amongst my target audience. I chose to have my artist keep a friendly but focused look as he looks directly at the camera that would develop a likeableness to him whilst also adding an air of mysteriousness to his nature. Whilst the idea for my masthead design was developed from existing texts such as 'Mojo' who also position their mastheads centrally, My design emulated the music magazine 'Paper' who also use a white background whilst containing the artist photo in a box with the text giving the artists name with a line of text beneath it lay over the image.


The contents page is the final deciding factor in whether consumers will purchase the magazine or not, it is where all potential readers will view the content of the magazine and make an assumption upon it's quality. I wanted my cover page to both attract readers whilst addressing them simply and being set out in a manner that made it both informative and simple to read, I therefore chose to align both columns of text to be the same width and in a size that can be read from afar, I kept the segment for my main article on my double page spread separate to allow me to use a larger font size to draw the readers attention towards it, also I included a separate coloured box to advertise the competition running in that issue as this would be one of my initial main selling points as it directly appealed to individuals that fall into my target age bracket of ages 15-25. I took inspiration for my cover from magazines such as 'NME' who stick to a basic colour scheme and arrange the information in columns with a separate box to showcase the main story the magazine is running.


On my double page spread I chose to not follow conventional styles of having a singular big photo of the artist but instead I included a number of smaller photos surrounded by text from the article, I chose this style as the content within my article was an insight into the life and childhood of the artist, I therefore found it suitable to use photos that appeared more natural and less styled to allow readers to connect with my artist. The language focuses on keeping the readers attention through being informative and interesting written without using too many extravagant words that may interrupt the audiences flow of reading. There are two quotes from the article embedded in the text that are in a larger font size and blue in colour, these are interesting quotes that causes a desire in the readers to explore the context behind the quote as it will be one of the first things the reader sees when first viewing the pages. I drew inspiration for this from magazines such as 'DIY' where the pictures are not as large as is conventionally seen and quotes are scattered throughout the text, I admired the simplistic but informative approach that I chose for my cover and contents and so decided to continue this in my double page spread.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My artist represents social groups of both genders aged 15-25, I used the website 'UK Tribes' to find a specific social group which best fits the audience I aimed my artist at. After carefully reviewing each tribe I found that the category of 'Alternative tribes' best fit the general description of my audience and targeted social groups with 'Young alts' being a more specific description of my audience. The description for the tribe is as follows: The tribe who want out of the mainstream - an experimental tribe trying anything from grunge to hardcore. It goes on to describe them as 'wanting out of the mainstream', this is essentially what indie/alternative music is based on and it is very common for lyrics about not fitting in to mainstream society to feature in songs from indie/alternative artists.

My artists and a real artist - Alex Turner, lead vocalist in 'Arctic Monkeys' both have similarities and differences. They are similar in the physical sense that they are both of the same ethnicity and have similar style hair cuts that resemble a purposeful messy look that aids in convincing audiences of the 'laid back' and carefree personality that both the real artist and my own created artist are attributed with. Both artists are slim of figure and are portrayed in a way that gives them an air of mysteriousness that intrigues audiences.

In the article on my double page spread I made use of the article to create a particular background for my artist that shows him to be a typically rebellious character with no concern for how people think of him in the media, this is a common trait amongst indie/alternative artists with many of them frequently referencing parties, getting drunk and drug taking. I made reference to such things in the article by talking about my artist making headlines for 'drunken bar fights'.