Draft Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

My target audience for my magazine is targeted at a male audience between the ages of 18 – 35, predominantly towards a male audience. I designed my magazine in a way that will attract a Hip –hop audience as well as a stylised/niche audience that will appreciate the styling of the artist on the cover. Having a male model on the cover would usually attract a more feminine audience but Hip – hop listeners are not usually looking for a female artist on the cover because it is a predominantly male industry. I used a colourful tone throughout my magazine as it is simplistic and minimalistic which attracts and engages an audience for Hip – hop.

The first thing the audience will see of the magazine is the front cover. This is when I decided I need my front cover to look stylistic and attract the audience when on the shop shelf. I decided I needed my artist to look different from other Hip – hop artists which made my magazine stand out from the rest and look unique and original. This is why I added a poster filter effect onto my artist to challenge the conventions but also attract my audience. I also placed my masthead going down the side of the page instead of going across the top which normal mastheads do on conventional magazines. The font I uses is bold and clear in a bright blue. The font is Arial which gives of a simplistic and stylistic effect onto my magazine cover. I used a similar font style to Billboard magazine and the style of the magazine itself. This is because Billboard is one of the biggest magazine in the world and appeals to thousands of people and with a magazine that is similar is style, it will attract the same audience demographic.

The model I used on my cover is dressed in casual clothing like my audience questionnaire suggested. I also did some research onto what clothing Hip – hop artists wear by looking at pictures and watching interviews. Most Hip – hop artists wear informal clothing like hoodies and baggy jeans or a leather jacket and a white top. I then had a chance to plan out what my artist was going to wear on the cover and chose for him to wear casual clothing with a gold chain around his neck. I also chose for my main artist to show minimal emotion and look “hard” to intimidate my audience. This was to adopt a normal, conventional, aesthetic look for my artist and make him be in line with a normal magazine.

On my contents page, I decided to use an image where one model is looking at the camera and another is looking away from the camera. One model was only there for aesthetic features and not really a part of the magazine, whereas I wanted a different photo of my main artist different from all of the ones featured on my magazine. I wanted both artists to wear similar clothing so they both wore a black jacket with a white/grey background behind them so one didn’t stand out more than the other. I also included a nice blue and black text colour theme throughout the contents as well as a top charts section for my audience who are interested who are in the charts, even if it is not the sane genre of music.

On my double page spread, I decided I should keep to the same colour scheme I have been using throughout my magazine. I added a red colour on my double page spread to make the title and the quote stand out and try not to get any grammatical spelling wrong. I also added a slight watermark in the top left of the page for an aesthetic feature. Because I targeted my audience towards more mature and sophisticated readers, I used different language techniques and tried to not make my language colloquial and make the language flow.