Audience research on front cover



no picture



When I finished my first draft of my front cover I needed advice on what needed to be improved and what needed to be changed which I displayed in previous post when I annotated my front cover with changes that needed to be made. however I needed to do some adience research to do with the small image of phantomz on the left. so i wetn around asking people which cover they preferred such as with a faded picture, no picture and a bold picture.



bold picture



faded picture

Here are the results of audience research for my magazine cover. I clearly shows that the magazine cover without the picture was the most favourable and when asked why they had chosen that particular cover many of the answers were because 'The picture looked out of place' and some said that 'It stood out on the cover'. Moreover the audience I used to research are mainly my target audience therefore their opinions and advice are always useful to improving my magazine. I have decided to use the magazine cover without the pic as it was the most like however will still edit a few things that i feel need some improving on such as filling in the gap whereby the picture was removed from or even jus moving the 'Top 50 Rap Artist' down to fill the gap diving the front page more space and better positioning.

Flatplan for contents

This is the flat plan I used to make my contents page. it was just a rough idea of where everything would be position and the context that I needed to include to make it more like a magazine contents page. Using another magazine called 'Clash' helped put together my contents page as it gave me an insight on how a professional magazine contents page should look.

Front cover and Contents Page

Analyzing Magazine contents pages

When I first done a contents page for my preliminary task I didn't have a clue in what i should include due to the fact that I had done no research or analyzed any contents pages that I could get ideas from. This lead to my first contents page not being good. I used that as a positive so that for my main task I could improve on it and by doing that I used the magazine 'Clash' as a template for my contents by analyzing it. This meant looking at the context used and how its displayed, also the layout and types of pictures used. Gave me a rough idea of what needed to be included in my contents page. It gave me ideas and also allowed me what i needed to do such as keep the colour scheme the same as the front cover to make it look more professional.

Variety of pictures

When working on the front cover of my magazine, I had to think about what picture would be perfect for the magazine so I took a variety of different pictures with different camera angles which could be used not only for the front cover but for the contents page and also the double spread that I will be attempting to do in the future.
 Here is just a small amount of pictures  took.
I've tried to take as many different angle shots as possible that can be used at every aspect of my magazine. There are plenty more however i just wanted to show one from each type of shot I took.

Semiotic Theory Lesson

Semiotics- Study of means and signs

1. iconic signs-which actually looks like what they represent
2. symbolic signs-which have a meaning that must be cultrally learned to what they represent
3. indexical signs-which have a connection to what they represent and are suggestive rather than directly resembling what they represent

• saussure (1954) and barthes (1972)
• plysemic meaning-the way that the same sign can mean lots of different things to different people.

motivated signs

Signs can be more or less motivated. Loosing motivated it is open to different theories. The latter takes a lot of individual interpretation. people have different views on different people, a more motivational sign just has more limited range of possible interpretation. There was a example where the teacher showed a picture of a baby and then we used connotation and dennotation to work it out and there was lots of different views such as is it a boy or girl and we had to use hte clothing to determine if it was a boy or girl, or could it be a son, daughter, nephew or niec . Later on we saw another picture of the baby with the father and then we realised that is the fathers son.

Flatplan for front cover

This flat plan was made in order for me to be my organised when planning my front cover. It gave me a clear idea of what I wanted on my magazine cover and where everything should be positioned. I only used this as an oppurtunity to decide what text I should put on my magaine which I analyzed other magazine to get an idea of the type of text that should be used on magazine covers.
I used boxes to show where everything should be place which made it easier to position everything. I also made my main stories stand out by making it more bold on the flat plan to represent it on the main front cover.
Anything I can improve just comment

Changes that need to be made

When looking at my first draft of my music magazine, I went around asking a couple people of what they though i could do to improve on it. I asked my teacher for some professional advice. I also thoght it would be a good idea to ask my friends as they are intially the same as my target audience so their input would be very useful in improving the magazine cover as it would give me an insight in what the target audience are attracted to.

Magazine front cover

     This is the first draft of my music magazine which i believe is a good job for a first draft. Firstly when coming up with the name of the magazine i came up with 5 different types of names that I felt were appropriate for the magazine and went around to people who I believe would be my target audience to get their votes on which one they liked best and to no surprise my favourite one was picked the most so I name the magazine 'Music Addiction'. When thinking about the main picture I needed to something to stand out , that would catch the audiences attention therefore I took many images and this picture stood out so I used the close-up shot for the main picture. I also wanted to use a wide range of different fonts for different reasons e.g a more larger/bold font for the main story and the colours used to emphasise the story by standing out. The layout was similar to a magazine that I read myself which is the vibe

Typical Reader

As I am on the verge of creating my own music magazine front cover, I need to consider a target audience.

Firstly my main age group range for my magazine who I would be targetting is teenagers roughly the age of 13-19 with a more urban approch to life whereas they can relate to the type of music the magazine I am making will express. Gender isnt really an issue with target audience as the music I will be using is diverse. My target audience would be very sociable, likes to go out with friends to parties, cinema etc. they would be very fashionable and up to date with the latest things such as clothes and elctronics. the magazine would have to include things to their interest such as artist they like, urban ones obviously like drake and jay-z

Analysing music magazine front covers

When looking at the magazine vibe first thing that catches my eye is the title of the magazine. The way the title is portaryed allows the main heading to stand out from the other heading which shows its importance within the magzine. The main picture of keyshia represnets alot to do with the magzine and the fact she is naked may infer that the magazine is informal. As keyshia Cole is the main and only picture on the front cover may give the audience an idea that the main story in the magzine is to do with her which is also shown by the size and boldness of her name on the front cover unlike the other names such as nelly and bow wow. In addition, the colour schemes (red,blue and white) are used very clevery here to represent the country the magazine was published in which is the USA. The red represents the important people used ithin the magazine and also the boldness

Analysing this front cover shows a clear difference from the vibe as this music magazine is portrayed as a more  formal due to the pictures to used, language used and also the font, also you may be able to argue that its formality is evident due to the music the magazine is trying to express. The picture used gives a clear in sight on what type of music the magazine is about showing a musician holding a violin and just like the vibe magazine the main picture is used to show who or what the main story will be on contributed bt the bold writing of the musicians nam (sarah chang)

                                                               

evaluation of preliminary task

When evaluationg my front cover and contents page there were many good things about it but also quite a few bad things.
Firsly I looked at the things that worked such as the title 'Bishop Banter' which related to the type of magazine that I was trying to produce which was a school magazine that represented the fun, enjoyable side to school. Additionally the main picture used on my front cover did also relate to the meaning of my magazine as there was a young student jumping at the joy of school.
Some more good points about my work was I used a variety of different shots when taking pictures which gave a clearer view point of the school such as the long shot I used to portray the P.e students.


However I also looked at the negative points to my work.
This includes such things as the colour scheme between my front cover and contents page. the colour scheme between my contents page and front cover did not match due to the main colours of the front cover which were black, white, red and orange whereas the main colours of my contents page were grey, white and black.
Also my contents page was not really done with as much effort as I put into my front cover. It lacked text and background information on on the magazine stories which I had included on my front cover.
another negative was the framing and lighting of my pictures. when taking the pictures I didnt look at the background colours which would effect the pictures and some of the pictures taken had things cut off such as hands, bits of heads.
 From my evaluation I will improve on my skills and use them on my main task.