Tuesday 5 April 2016

Question 5 - Audience Feedback

 To get an appropriate feedback, I concluded my 6 questions on a website called "www.monkeysurvey.com" and asked 13 people to complete my survey as I needed feedback on produced magazine. The results seems to be quite accurate. I have asked people who resemble my target audience by age (teens to young adults) with 3 people who are over 18 and the rest who are under 18 to fill out my survey through Facebook by sending them the link to my
questions (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SVPRY9H)

Above these questions was an image of my front cover, for the first question, I have asked people if it looks like a music magazine as it can somehow appear like a magazine of a different genre to another person. The results for this particular question was positive - 92.31% of people said that it looks like a music magazine whereas 7.69% said it doesn't. The reason why it might not look like a music magazine is because the model doesn't look like an artist or musician and no instrumental symbols are used in the front cover.

 My next question was "What genre do you think it is?" the majority said that it was Dubstep meaning that the magazine successfully appeals to my desired target audience, however some answered that my magazine is a Jazz and a Pop magazine. To increase the percentage for ''Dubstep'' I should have made it more clear like adding a darker colour theme such as black and neon as those colours associate with the dubstep genre. However, Chillstep resembles closely with Dubstep and Pop, meaning that the percentage of people thinking it's a pop magazine could also be my target audience although one person skipped this question meaning that only 12 answered.


 My third question was "Is my magazine eye-catching?"  This particular question also has positive responses as 92% of people agree with my question and believe that it would easily catch their attention. Not everyone believed it was eye-catching enough so in order to make it more eye catching I would have to improve my colour theme by making it brighter and busier. I could also make it more eye-catching by enlarging the puffs as they might not be as visible as I initially thought.

I asked another question which was "Do you think my magazine is successful?" and 12/13 people thought that my design was successful whilst one person wasn't sure about how successful it was.On the other hand, no people said that my design was unsuccessful which means that I managed to make it appealing enough to my target audience.
For this question, only 12 people answered as one person have skipped this question. I asked people "What do you like most about the design?" to find out what they think is successful about my design in particular.  Majority believed that they liked the image following by 3 people who liked the masthead and 2 people who liked the graphics and the title. One person commented that they like the layout. This suggests that my target audience would find my magazine quite appealing in many different ways. As the Image turned out to be most successful, I could improve it by making it more engaging.
Finally, my last question was about fashion. I wanted to know if my model looked fashionable in my target audience's eyes as I researched trends and the 'hipster' style to relate more to my readers. Fortunately, 11/13 people believed that my model was fashionable whilst other two people were either not sure or thought she wasn't trendy enough. In order to improve this, I could make it more obvious that I was aiming for a hipster style by adding a beanie hat, headphones, black lipstick and a different coat.

Saturday 2 April 2016

Evaluation Question 5 - Attracting Target Audience And Choices Made In Production.



Question 5 - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;





















My initial design and my final product ended up looking fairly similar in terms of layout and design. Additionally, I changed the colour scheme, text, model's pose and the graphics which improved the overall look of my magazine. I already decided on my model's costume, therefore I had it on my front cover plan.
I researched few magazines and Dub-step art and textures to help with the production of my magazine. I found out that dub step has a lot of neon colours such as turquoise and yellow and a lot of dark colours such as ocean blue and black. I decided I'm not going to use black because it isn't very eye-caching and makes the magazine look plain and un-professional. Therefore, I used ocean blue. A big amount of Dub-step art is extremely colourful and 'artificial' which matches well with it's music style, however chill-step is more natural and calming so I decided that I am not going to use too many colours but instead, use a stricter colour scheme so it's not too busy and it's not too plain and keep it busy and engaging for the readers yet at the same time match with the genre.

In my original plan, There wasn't many things overlapping the masthead as I thought by not overlapping it, it looks more professional, However, I found out that most magazines such as Rock Sound, Rolling Stones and  Kerrang cover up their Mastheads with graphics and the Model, so I decided to do the same because by overlapping the text, it creates a a 3D effect which makes it stand out and at the same time, makes the model 'pop out' of the magazine.

 A lot of music magazines portray their models on the front page as simple and emotionless (usually wearing plain colours and simple clothing such as a grey T-shirts and black trousers).However, this is not the case with fashion magazines as they usually make their models very colourful, engaging and at the same time make their models perform some unusual poses. I wanted my magazine to be engaging therefore it was influenced by fashion magazines and a music magazine called Mixmag magazine. I wanted my magazine to have a happy mood, therefore I made sure my model appears unique compared to the plain magazines and I also made it colourful to match with the mood I was trying to convey.

The title was a major production change, I made it bigger, changed the position of it and I also changed the colour as it originally was a lighter shade of blue. For the title, I added some graphics such as the scratch and the windmill on a letter ''L'' to make it really stand out from other text within the front cover. I have noticed that it is common in dubstep magazines to have titles that stand out, one example for this is Rocksound magazine with the issue that featured Skrillex in their front cover. Rocksound magazine also has a graphic splash on the title on the letter ''L'' as well which makes it look more interesting than other texts and titles  from other magazines.

There was another thing I had to keep in mind, which was how my model was dressed. I needed to know what clothes are in style so my target audience would relate to the model and buy the magazine. This is the reason why I dressed up my model in a fashionable outfit.