Target Audience

This is a print screen from www.nrs.co.uk . This shows that over 60% of the readers of top of the pops magazine are from the socio-economic category C2DE. This is the socio-economic category that i shall be aiming my magazine at. Over 80% of the readership are aged 15-44 so i know i will be aiming my magazine at an age group within this margin. Over 75% of the readership is female rather than male. From all this information i know that i will be aiming my magazine at females aged 15-44 in the socio-economic category C2DE. However knowing this doesnt actually give us that much helpful information about our target audience as girls aged 11-15 will not have a job and therefore cannot be classed this way anyway, so their socio-economic category is not really relevant.

This is a print screen taken from www.bbcmagazinesadvertising.com the advertisers of the "top of the pops" magazine. These are the key facts about the magazine, they show that the target audience for this magazine is mainly girls aged 11-15. This is the target audience that i will be aiming for.

Introduction to main task

I have been asked to design a music magazine. I have decided that my magazine will be a pop magazine similar to "top of the pops" and "smash hits" . This task will be a development of the skills that i used in the preliminary task.

For my mast head i chose to use a large font that stands out and would appeal to students in that it is interesting rather than a simple boring font such as times new roman or something similar. I went for the simple mast head at the top of the cover. I then have a portrait photograph as the main image for my magazine cover. This is set to the right of the page with the main flash and other stories on the left side. Then at the bottom i put another story.
For the contents page i chose to use one side of the double page spread, the inside cover could be used for an advertisement. The contents page has a simple layout, with main stories and a contents list on the left and several pictures on the right.

My contents page is simple and plain. As a mock up i am happy with this and i feel you can understand what it would really look like from this draft. The only thing i might change to improve it would be to have a different coloured background.

I was very pleased with the end result of my magazine cover design. I am happy with the general layout of my front cover, however I should have made the main flash font slightly smaller so none of the words cover any part of the persons face. The picture could have also been better, i think next time i will make sure the background is plain and simple, just a coloured wall or something similar. My magazine cover may also look a bit boring as all the stories on the front cover are in the same colour and font and i think if i had one of the stories in a different colour the cover may stand out more as a whole. All in all i am happy with the final cover i have made but i am aware there are several changes to be made to improve it.

I took two pictures for the use of my front cover. The first i was quite happy with, but the background was not exactly how i wanted it to be. The framing in the first picture is not ideal and i thought it would be hard to put on a magazine. The second i took in landscape view, which makes it slightly harder to crop but i much preferred the background and the lighting on the second picture so i decided to use this for my front cover.

Introduction

For my preliminary task, i have been asked to design a college magazine that will be targeted at either the students or the teachers. I have chosen the students of Sussex downs college as my target audience for the magazine i will be making.