Target Audience

I will look at the target audience and sales figures of similar style magazines to try and create a profile of a typical reader. On the grid above is information from www.nrs.co.uk showing the sales figures of several magazines, including two I want to look at, Mojo and Q. (Click to see bigger)
It shows that Mojo has sells around 286,000 copies a month, 227,000 of which are sold to men. The majority of sales in terms of age are people between the ages of 15-44. Q sells 666,000 a month and again has its biggest audience in the 15-44 year olds.

Judging by these sets of data I will need to target my magazine mainly to men from the age of 15-44, although I think the majority are towards the higher end of the age scale.

I also looked at socio-economic classifications,

A high ranking professionals; lawyers, doctors etc

B middle ranking professional; middle managers in businesses, teachers etc

C1 “white-collar” (office) workers; junior managers, office clerks, bank clerks, nurses etc

C2 skilled manual workers; carpenters, electricians etc

D semi and unskilled manual workers; drivers, post sorters, labourers etc

E people subsisting on state benefits; the unemployed, pensioners etc

and Psychographics ;

Mainstreamers

Aspirers

Succeeders

Individualists

Carers

I also looked at some media packs for other magazines. For Uncut it showed specific data like;

Male readership 86%
Average age 37
Married or living with a partner 60%
Working full time 77%
Average income £29,263
Circulation: 76,526
Readership: 280,000

This again backs up the idea of directing my magazine at men and also of an older age, possibly around 25-44. In terms of socio-economic classifications the reader, or whoever makes the money in the household, will probably fall under B/C2. In terms of psychographics I would class my reader as an individualist as these magazines like Mojo try and direct away from the mainstream. I also think my reader might also be a succeeder as the older readers may have more money but don't want to show it off.


My Typical Reader Profile
Male aged 35 whose musical interests include Classic and Modern Rock. Also Modern and Classic indie and some Americana. He is living with his partner and has an income of around £30,000. He is a heavy consumer of music but is also interested in film and sport etc. He is a succeeder and an individualist.

I think it is important to have a target audience decided when trying to create a successful magazine as it all depends on them. The audience must see something in your magazine that they don’t in others to make them want to buy it.



Other research

Because I wanted to make my magazine as realistic as possible I looked at lots of different existing magazines. But as well as looking at the things I mentioned before I also looked into things like pricing, circulation, number of pages and frequency.

Price

Uncut - £4.30
NME - £2.20
Q - £3.90

Most of the magazines I looked at were not over £5.00 and most of them are around 200 pages, except NME, which is extremely over priced for the magazine quality.

Release Frequency

Monthly - UNCUT, Q, MOJO
Weekly - NME
Fortnightly – Rolling Stone


The majorities are monthly and are larger and more popular.

Introduction - Main Task

My task is to design and produce a front cover, contents page and double page spread for a new music magazine. The genre of music magazine I will focus on is Modern and Classic Rock. Similar magazines to the magazine I want to create would be Uncut, Mojo and Q. This task is a development of my skills from the preliminary task. In this blog I will outline my planning decisions and evaluate my work.

Final Cover + Contents

This is my final design for my main cover. In the end I went with blue for a colour scheme like the colours on the school logo to relate it directly to SDC. I decided to edit out the background of my image to give it a more professional look and also to allow the side headings to be more clear to read. I chose a font which is familar as a 'college font' to a lot of people.

Flat plans

This are the two initial drawings I did for ideas for my magazine. Although they are not very in depth and in detail, they helped me to remember to include each element needed to create a standard magazine layout. A lot more of the design ideas like colour, fonts and some of the postitioning came to mind when I was in the process of designing in Adobe.

Evaluation of 2 images

This is the image I chose for the front cover of my magazine. I chose it because he is standing straight on and looking into the camera. I thought this would be more appropriate for the front cover image, as it needs to be inviting for the audience. I also chose it because the positioning is jsut right as I only wanted his head and shoulders in the frame. Also I made him pose on a clear background so that it would be easier to work with on Photoshop is I should chose to edit around him. This was also the best quality photo.






This was another picture I took but chose not to use. He is not looking into the camera and the distance away from him is not quite right, as I wanted to fit in just the shoulders and head. Also because he is further to the left in the frame I wanted one where he was more the the right to work with my layout idea. The photo also was a bit grainy and not the best quality.

Introduction - Preliminary Task

I have been asked to create the front page for a college magazine, specifically Sussex Downs. My target audience for my magazine is pupils and teachers and anyone involved in the SDC community.