Primary Research

These are the questions I asked:

What do you think the genre of the magazine is and why?

What do you think about the fonts used and why?

What don't you like about it and why?

What do you think of the photo's and why?

What do you think the target audience is and why? 

 

From the feedback I received, I gained a better understanding of what was thought of the front cover, contents and double page spread. A comment that was reiterated was that the magazine seemed mainstream.

Target Audience Research. Magazine Audience Profile

The magazine I am looking at is NME. The shot above shows the reader profiles of this magazine. It is more popular amongst males, with 69% of the audience coming under this heading. The statistics show that the average age of the readers is 24, with 52% of them being in full time work, 29% still studying and 7% working part time. There areMost of their readership come under A,B and C1 with a percantage of 65% which shows that their readers will be willing to spend money on NME as the social classes ABC1 are usually wealthy. The magazine has a readership of 369,000 and a circulation of 40,948.

Institution and Distribution

Q magazine is owned by

Bauer Media: http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/

Also 'Mojo', 'Kerrang' and many other music magazines are owned by this same company. The company focuses on producing music magazines but do a lot of different ones so they are able to research the different types of music.

It is beneficial to own the rights to many magazines and a range of magazine styles, such as different music types and genres. Also magazines that aren't music related but perhaps sport or fashion related. These music companies will have experience in comparing and relating different music types to show contrast positively and promoting their magazines with correct and thorough information that certain target audiences may be interested in. This would make the magazines more popular and would ensure the audiences remain interested and impressed with the content of the magazines. 

Textual Analysis

Brief; print

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium, close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and masthead. Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate your grasp of DTP.

Main Task: The Front Page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine. A minimum of 4 images must be used, all images and graphics must be produced by the Candidate.

Magazine Research