Planning and designing my music magazine

I done a questionaire with 10 questions to ask my target audience. I used some of the questions from my recent questionaire which was used for my previous designs which I personally thought would help me in drawing my results to a full conclusion.

My target audience: Teenage girls between the ages of 14-18.

1. How big would you like the font:

- Small

- Medium

- Large

- Extra large

2. What colour would you prefer for the magazine?

-  Pink

-  Purple

-  Blue

-  Green

-  Black/grey

-  Red

3. What theme would you prefer for the magazine?
-  Summer
-  Winter
-  Autumn              
-  Spring
-  No theme

4. Would you like an update of this particular magazine:
-  Every week
-  Every month
-  During the seasons throughout the school year


5. Would you like a single artist or a band shown on the magazine:
- Single
- Band


6. What sorts of eye makeup would you like to see on the model/models?
- Not much - natural
- Small amount applied
- Dark


7. What colour clothes would you like to see on the model/models?
- Mixed
- One set colour
- Similar colours


8. Do you want the same model/models for the whole of the magazine?
-  Yes
-  No


9. How much information would you prefer on the double page spread?
- Full of context - pages completely filled
- Not much, more pictures would be preferred
- Small amount - barely any


10. What title would you like to see on the front page of the magazine?
- Tone
- Beat
- Voice

Results:

1. How big would you like the font?

From this i can see that there was a much higher number of participants in my target group that wanted the text in my music magazine to be medium. This helped me make the decision to make the text present not to big but not too small. This would make it easy and comfortable for my target audience to read my music magazine.

2. What colour would you prefer for the magazine?



This pie chart shows me that the most popular colours were between pink, black and red. Red and black showed the highest amount of votes, so this persuaded me to choose the main colours for my music magazine to be red and black. I decided to use the colours to match the pictures that I will take and the text. My single artist model will be wearing a red dress and heels and I will make sure that the pictures and text match each other. I have chosen the text to be mainly black and bold to make it stand out, with red coloured titles to make the music magazine look more attractive, interesting and eye catching.



3. What theme would you prefer for the magazine?

These results showed me that my target audience did not want to see a particular theme in the magazine that I am going to create. I preferred this as it gave me a wider range of options to choose from and I could decide personally myself. However I still gathered information from my target audience about what they wanted to see in the magazine. This gave me more knowledge about what they wanted to see, but I could decide personally myself.

4. Would you like an update of this particular magazine?

I also wanted to find out how often my target audience wanted to see a new addition of the new magazine. The most popular option was every month which illustrated positive choices, as this would give more time to work on what to add into the new addition of the magazine.

5. Would you like a single artist or a band shown on the magazine?

When I asked this certain question, the results showed me that my target audience wanted to see a single artist in the music magazine. In my music magazine I will use a model to represent a single artist as this is what my target audience want to see. This will make my music magazine even more popular and make the target market want to buy it. I also gained certain advise from my target audience as I asked what they wanted to see the single artist wearing/doing/where the pictures would be taken. Even though I did not include this information in my questionaire, I will include it when I take my pictures. Next time I will make sure that I write a longer questionaire including different and a wider range of questions.

6. What sorts of eye makeup would you like to see on the model/models?

The results for this question showed me that my target audience wanted to see my single artist model wearing dark makeup. This would benefit me while I take the pictures as I would be able to match the models outfit with the particular makeup that she is wearing. Also I can match the background scenery and the titles/text that I will present on all the pages.

7. What colour clothes would you like to see on the model/models?

I found out from my questionaire that people in my target audience would prefer to see one set colour for the whole of my music magazine. I was very pleased with these results as I could match all the colours together in my music magazine, knowing that this is what my target audience would want to see. This helped me alot as I knew that I could put my personal ideas towards my music magazine aswell as making my target audience.

8. Do you want the same model/models for the whole of the magazine?

 When I asked my target audience if they wanted to see the same model the whole way throughout my music magazine, more than three quarters of them voted 'yes' which showed me that my target audience want to see the same model throughout my music magazine.
I was extremely happy with these results because whilst I was planning my questionnaire I personally wanted to use the same model the whole way through, as I personally viewed this would make the magazine more unique.

9. How much information would you prefer on the double page spread?

This piece of feedback was extremely helpful to me as I needed to know how much content to include on my double page spread. My target audience chose that they wanted to view a small amount of content. This led me to planning to take more pictures for my target audience to view on my music magazine pages.

10. What title would you like to see on the front page of the magazine?

Overall on this particular question I was worried that it would be difficult to choose a certain title for my music magazine. This was because I found it hard to come up with a few names to include in my questionnaire. However the results showed me that the most popular option was 'Voice' and this was my personal favourite. I was happy with this final decision.

I chose two types of magazines out of the four that I originally displayed as examples. I researched these two magazines and found two different magazine front covers to analyse which I found the most interesting.


My choices were Kerrang and NME, this was because I found Kerrang had the most interesting front cover for its music magazine and NME displayed a very popular model on the front page who I personally admire myself.

I then looked at examples of double page spreads:

I chose to look at double page spreads as I needed some more aspiration and ideas for my own music magazine design. These three existing double page spreads gave me some more ideas to use for my personal music magazine design.

The artists present on these double page spreads are extremely popular with the public, and are well recognised this would make the magazine they were involved in more popular, and the addition of the magazine would become even more popular. I chose these three magazines to analyse because I was very familiar with these music artists and thought that the double page spreads were the most attractive.

I liked all the layouts of these, however I thought that the middle double page spread had the image to large so there wasn't much text or information present. However this made the individual more attractive as people would prefer to read less text and look at the pictures involved in the magazine.

The music magazines double page spread that involved the artist Lily Allen, it illustrates a quote that was spoken from Lily Allen herself, which would make the reader of this particular magazine more interested in reading what the artist has to say.

The bottom double page spead which shows an image of the artist Jamelia is my favourite of all the three double page spreads. The reason for this is because it contains a background of images of her, however the technique that has been used makes the text over lap the pictures which I personally think has a very good effect and makes the reader more attracted to reading this magazine.

NME Magazine Cover Analysed

Analysing Magazines

Information and Target Audience

Kerrang: Kerrang is dedicated to rock music and published by Bauer Media Group. It was first ever published in June 1981 as a 'one off' in one of the local newspapers. By the early 2000's it became the best selling British Newspapers. It included heavy mental and rock music. It placed many 'thrash' and 'glam metal' acts on the cover of the music magazine. For example: Bon Jovi. Different editors soon took over the magazine in certain years and kerrang became extremely popular. Particular editors decided to leave Kerrang, so even more different people took over.
Due to more modern technology there is now a personal website for Kerrang's music magazine itself, also a Tv channel devoted to Kerrang. Kerrang has recieved many different awards for its music and do live tours for fans.
Kerrangs target audience is aimed at teenagers and young adults interested in this specific type of music.

Mojo: Mojo is a very popular music magazine which was officially published by Emap, however since 2008 it has been published by Bauer who is the same publisher as Kerrang. The type of music that it produces is rock music. This magazine was first published on October 1993 and it had Bob Dylan and John Lennon on the front cover.
A unique selling point that this particular magazine has is that every buyer recieves a free CD with every copy of this magazine. This would make the magazine more popular as more people would buy the magazine to recieve the gift, persuding the public to listen to this type of music.

NME: This popular music magazine was published in the United Kingdom and has been published weekly from March 1952. It began as a music newspaper and then changed to a newsprint, it started including the singles chart and soon an online version on NME was avaliable. This music magazine had a number of different editors that changed it over the years and made it become even more successful than it was originally.

Q: This music magazine was published once a month in the United Kingdom. In Q's early years it was called 'The music guide to music and more' and originally it was meant to be called 'Cue'. However the name was changed due to the editors believing that the music magazine may get confused with a snooker magazine.