Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

By Estelle Naughton

Colour schemeIn my music magazine I attempted to attract my target audience by having a bright and eye catching colour scheme, coincidently similar colours are used within Vibe magazine which is a completely different genre but the colour choices are effecting in attracting their audience, which has also been demonstrated with my magazine. Although the colour scheme is slightly unusual for my indie/acapella genre as one of my peers mentioned, I believe it has worked well as though it’s unordinary for the genre but it gives an insight on the music proving it can be upbeat and in your face, shown by the colours. I think because the colours are unusual for my magazine and it’s genre, it has done well in attracting my desired audience because a few of my peers said it was really professional looking and they would buy it. Some people also commented upon how I’d got the colour scheme to stand out against the model’s clothing and how it really works, creating a binary opposition between people’s preconceived ideas of acapella music and how it is actually represented. To attract my desired audience which is teenagers and younger people of both genders, I have used stereotypical colours which represent genders as blue is for boys whilst pink is for girls supposedly, I think this works as despite having all female models and input it allows the male audience to know that the magazine isn’t just designed for females and only targeted at females, it is also available for males to read and enjoy.

Examples

A few members of the group commented upon how the bold colour scheme stood out against the model’s clothing on the front cover, and are ‘upbeat’ which was what I wanted to show about the acapella and instrumental music through the use of the colours.

I believe the colours are effective as people are drawn to the bright colours but don’t usually associate the bright colours with acapella music. Despite this, people still believe it to be a professional looking magazine and would consider buying it if I was to publish it.

ImageryMy imagery attracts my target audience as they’re high quality images like all magazines used and due to editing, they look rather professional and almost everyone commented upon the images and how professional they look. Having female models attracts the target audience by having an enticing female on the front cover who is making direct eye contact, allows indie music followers to buy and read the magazine. By having female models, it also encourages male audiences to read the magazine as they will want to know who the attractive female is on the front of the magazine and how they got to where they are in the music industry. To entice the male audience more, I could’ve used male artists and this would balance out the gender representations throughout the magazine but I think it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in attracting my target audience. I have used a series of camera shots throughout my magazine, close up shot for the front cover magazine which I thought would work well, and one participant commented upon the effectiveness of this.

LayoutThe layout I have adopted is based upon product research and applying the Gutenberg principle which has shown to be affective in not just my magazine, but other official magazines. Most people commented about how the layout was simplistic yet effective as it was easy to read without it being too close together, meaning the images and the text. I have attempted to follow the Gutenberg design principle which most official magazines do, this is what I think makes my magazine more professional in terms of how everything is placed on the pages.

Most people enjoyed the layout and how it made the magazine look professional and official.

I attracted my target audience by previously researching other magazines of the similar genre such as Q and then using similar techniques to then attract my desired audience for my magazine. By researching popular magazines before constructing my own has allowed me to come up with multiple ideas including layout which allowed me to plan how I was going to set everything out before actually working on my pages.

Although they’re not identical, a few traits of Q magazine are implemented in my magazine.