How did you attract/address your audience?

The first thing a potential customer will notice about a magazine is the front cover. A lot can be told about what content is included within the magazine at first glance. I took this into consideration when creating my magazine. After some research I discovered that most music magazines continue the same style throughout the magazine so the customer can look at the magazine and immediately decide if it’s for them or not. With my magazine I was trying to attract primarily students or young people, between the ages of 14-24 who are interest in 90’s-current day, modern rock. (see section E: Target audience for reasons) To do this I had to do some research into the target audience and look at things such as fashion style, lifestyle and of course musical interest.

I made the front page of my magazine a very stylistic image to fit into the genre of music I was trying to cover. I made it stand out by putting it on a white background. The font I used on the front cover was similar to what I had seen on clothes, CD covers and other magazines of this genre. I set up a sample of fonts and chose the appropriate ones, although I have also included fonts that were not on the sample which I found at a later date.
The colour scheme was very important for the type of audience I was aiming for. The research that I did shows that the audience I’m aiming for like to wear black clothes, red accessories etc., this obviously is a generalisation although a majority of the research pointed to this. To coincide with this I made the colours on the front page and throughout the magazine very neutral for the most part. The front cover is primarily white with the image being black and other shades of grey. I added a Red bar at the top and some red text so that the cover was eye catching and the colour also showed up in my research. I kept this red bar throughout the magazine featuring it on every page for a brief summary of the page or just extra detail. It also help me keep consistency with style on all three images.

The bands that I feature in the magazine are of the genre of music that I was aiming the magazine at. I made the front cover feature one of the bands, Sum41, in large text. This is a very well-known band within certain sub-cultures. The band has been around since 1999 and is still playing today. This means the target age group of the magazine would have grown up listening to the music of the band and may still do today. I also include some new bands such as Veara and The Riverboat Gamblers as I know a lot of the sub-culture that I am aiming at like to be different and listen to fresh new bands.