Question 5 - How did you attract and address your audience?

Front Cover

It was important that my front cover appealed to my target audience as the cover is the part of the magazine that will catch the audiences eye. Because of this, i tried to address them in several ways. These were:

• Font. The majority of the fonts featured on my front cover are sans serif font, which make the magazine look edgy and up to date. There are a few bits of text in a sans serif font as i thought it looked less bold, therefore making it effective for the less important bits of text. The font for my masthead is slightly ragged looking, to connote rebellion and nonconformity. It's also in red, which connotes danger and "alert", which would make it eye catching and appealing to my target audience.
• Photographs. The main model on the front cover is inspirational to readers because they will be aspire to be a "successful" musician like she is. Also, she represents the genre as she looks quirky and different. The denim shirt she is wearing represents "grunge" culture, and the glasses she's wearing are unique and individual. She connotes an image of rebellion as she is swearing on the front cover, continuing to make her look edgy. A similar connotation is shown by the male on the front cover, as he is smoking a cigarette. Also, he shows his love for music as he is wearing headphones, which will appeal to my target audience as they will be keen music listeners too.
• Language. I tried to use fairly simplistic yet witty language, so it was easy to read but interesting at the same time. Phrases such as "who the hell do they think they are?" also connote rebellion, as it's blasphemy and would perhaps be slightly offensive to older readers. This would be appealing to my target audience as they would aspire to have that sort of image.

Contents Page

After viewing my front cover, the contents page is the next thing the audience will view, therefore it is important that it is just as appealing. I kept a corresponding colour scheme, so the magazine didn't look mismatched, and i continued to use the same fonts for the majority of the contents page. However i used a different font for the text in small print, as there wasn't any featured like that on the front cover. I used a sans serif font for this, as a serif font would make it look similar to a newspaper and therefore would look slightly old fashioned. Similar simplistic, witty language was also incorporated, so the reader can get a good idea of what is featured in the magazine without having to read into too much detail. The model featured on the left is typically attractive to male readers, so this would make them more likely to read the article that the picture advertises. They would aspire to look like the "editor" as he looks fairly edgy, at the same time as looking quite important. The photograph of a gig would be appealing to the audience also, as typical readers would probably visit gigs regularly.

Double Page Spread

Here, similar aspects are incorporated. The colour scheme is kept the same, so it corresponds to the rest of the magazine, and the people in the pictures are conveying a quirky and interesting image to appeal to readers. Differing slightly from the rest of the magazine; the language used is still intended to be fairly witty, however it is less simplistic as the text is featured in articles. It's was important here that the language used was witty, to engage interest, but also slightly persuasive so the audience would buy the music being described.