Target Audience Considerations

Qualities of target audience you want to reflect -
For my target audience, there are a few qualities that they could exude. One of the main stand out qualities could be that they have a quirky, artistic and almost grunge-like style. Translations of this would be seen in my cover image from the way that my fictional band/artist would be dressed and also actual components of my magazine such as font choices and small illustrations for example that would create an artistic vibe/outlook. Also they could be that they have a very classic indie rock taste when it comes to music and that they have a broad knowledge of the bands/artists that made the genre so popular and what it is today.

Aspirations of your target audience - My target audience would maybe aspire to take a literature route, interested in the language and communication of words for example (as my magazine is called "Eclectic") or follow their quirkiness in a career in a creative industry and this components of this artistic nature would be displayed in design of my own magazine.


Feature Ideas - "Ben Howard: Album to fandom", "Palma Violets New Album.. Outlook!"Review, Interview with the Arctic Monkeys, "The Smith's 30 year Anniversary", "Photographs of the decade"-(Polaroid style photo's of a band/artist-fictional).


Regular Ideas - "Gig Guide", "Artist of the year:Their story", "Crossword", "Events of the month"


List of Advertisers to approach - I would approach an advertiser such as IPC as this is the distributor for NME which is one of the main influences for the conventions and features of my own magazine. This would also mean that my magazine would be distributed to my niche indie market with specialist distributors such IPC to allow me to appeal to my target audience of young women/girls of the indie genre easily.


Magazine Name - I was considering the masthead to be "Eclectic" as this would reflect the interest in meaning behind words that I have and I think that it targets a niche market of the indie genre (see masthead evaluations post for more detail).

My School Magazine

This my final school magazine cover and contents page. Through research into other school' newsletter's I decided that I wanted my prelim task to look more like a school 'magazine' than a 'newsletter' as there were some features on their newsletters that made them look unprofessional and not cater to the intended target audience. I tried to over come these elements when I produced my own.

The photographs that you can see above included on both my cover and contents page were all edited using Photoshop. 

Indie Genre Mood board

This is a mood board that I have created as inspiration for my 'indie' genre magazine. I have included the artistic sense of the genre such as album covers, posters and typography that is very popular with the audience, bands/artists and lyrics from their songs. I have also included a lot of the lifestyle side to the 'indie' audience like the style of the clothing an artist/musician may wear to coincide with the magazine that I am creating. The style that I will most probably reflect and am inspired by the most for the band/artist on my cover page is the indie girl bad Haim (the black and white image in the centre of the page) and Jenn Im a Youtuber with a fashion channel, as they both have a quirky yet grunge-like style which is what I want for the girl band/artist that will be features as a mid shot for my central/main image. This is because my indie magazine is going to be aimed at girls/young women and having this style presented on the cover will appeal and attract the most to this age range.

Title Evaluations

After a lot of thought into what my music magazine should be called and from a lot of research through song/album titles, I have narrowed it down to 2 possible titles; Eclectic and charged.

Eclectic - The definition of eclectic is "composed of a variety of components drawn from a variety of sources and styles". I was already very familiar with what the word eclectic meant and I use it a lot when describing things, however I never originally thought about it being useful for this project. I thought that "eclectic" was very appropriate as indie magazines tend to study/feature a variety of sub-indie genres within them, for example ranging from classic indie rock featuring bands such as The Smiths and The Clash etc to more recent, newer indie artists such as Jake Bugg and Two Door Cinema Club which both have two different styles. Reflecting this in my own magazine should appeal to a wider audience of many styles within the indie genre fan base.

Charged -  I thought that charged had many connotations with the main one relating to music being an electric charge which may then be suggestive of an electric guitar, which is a main component of an indie bands/artists' instruments that drives the music. Using this as a title would create an image of this to the audience which would be effective as the masthead of an indie magazine.

From these two title decisions I have finally decided to call my music magazine eclectic. After weighing up the signifier's and effectiveness of both I concluded that eclectic had more of an appropriate appeal to a wider audience range within the indie genre and had a more effective meaning behind it. The word is also often used as terminology referring to artistic subjects and so this would further appeal to a lot of my target audience as the style of many indie artists/fans of such music tend to be quite quirky, artistic and contemporary.

Mindmap of Ideas for My Music magazine title

This is a mind map of all of the possible ideas that associate or have connotations of the indie genre of music for the title of my magazine. I thought of words that first come to my mind when I think of indie music and music in general such as sounds etc. I then thought of bands/artists that I listen to and some that I know would appeal to the "indie" audience and some lyrics or song titles that may influence the name for my masthead. I also looked at the lifestyle that this type of demographic might lead and tried to gather some inspiration from here that would help the audience to relate to the title all the more.

My Music magazine target audience

My target audience for my music magazine will be between the ages of 16-23 and may appeal to both male and females, however it will be directed more towards females as the artistic feel and colour schemes, bands/artists may be more female orientated. I wanted to do this because I want to create a magazine that I would want to buy myself and that I would be attracted to from these components. My audience will be aimed at alternative individuals with a quirky style that are interested in Indie rock. The audience will be a typical 17 year old girl that has an artistic/contemporary style, spends a lot of her money buying vintage vinyl's/albums and goes to intimate gigs in architecturally beautiful buildings. She is always listening to music whenever she has an opportunity and is linked to quite a few social networking sites to keep up to date with her favourite artists and their tour dates. Her favourite bands would include classic, older bands like The Smiths, The Clash, The Arctic Monkeys and more newer indie pop bands like The Kooks, Jake Bugg, Two Door Cinema Club and Imagine Dragons. She is interested in the photography in magazines and music is one of the most important components of her life. She will buy quite a bit of her clothes from thrift/charity shops and has an individual style and she is always seeking to learn new things and discover new artists/fashion inspiration.

Inspiration for my main cover image

The image above is of a YouTuber named Jenn Im who is a fashion inspiration to many teenage girls subscribed to her channel. I loved this photograph of her as it encaptured the feel that I wanted to portray in my main cover image for my music magazine. Her grungy style, combined with the mid shot, displaying her clothes, down to her expression and editing is perfect for the indie genre and what I wanted to try and replicate. From my research in to the layout, shot type ect used on most NME and Q magazines, I saw that the main cover images are mainly mid shots of the main featured band/artist and so this inspired me to do the same to allow a more realistic and professional, relatable cover.

Above is a really early issue of NME that I managed to buy from Ebay. I chose this edition to buy as I loved the editing of the main cover image and the style of clothing that looks to be like 80's grunge. This issue also gave me ideas for the props in my photo shoot such as the sunglasses, which I thought really added mystery and individual style to the photograph. The tones and colours in the photo seem to be yellow and slightly cross processed, which is what I will try to replicate on my own cover image.

Theorists behind Feminist views in the Media

Laura Mulvey's - "Male Gaze Theory"

Today, many feminists would see most media output as a product of a male dominated order. In 1975 Laura Mulvey, a British feminist film theorist, created the 'Male Gaze theory'. She stated that cinema audiences look at films in 2 ways; voyeuristically and fetishistically. In turn, this leads to 2 side effects; the 'objectification of females' and the 'narcissistic identification' of the ideal image on the screen. Her theory confirmed that the media was created for the satisfaction of males, with women merely being 'objects of desire for their visual pleasure'.
Below is a prime example of the Male gaze theory:

Cohen's Moral Panic Theory

In this theory, Cohen says that within the media, certain groups of people are portrayed as a threat to society by people in power (such as the government), and this is played on, causing a moral panic among the public. The panic among the public turn them against the certain groups of people, turning them into 'folk devils'. Major examples of this is seen today within the media, where newspapers have turned many British people against immigrants, and turned many Westerners against Muslim countries and all people who live in them.

Richard Dyer's Star Theory

Richard Dyer noted that a star is just an image created for audiences, not a real person - they are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings. The 'star image' is based on 2 paradoxes; they must be both ordinary and extraordinary, and they must be simultaneously present and absent. 

Final Images for School Magazine Edits using Photoshop

From choosing my final better images from my photo shoot, I have edited the four photographs below and have included the original photo's above the edited versions so that the difference and changes I have made can be seen clearly.

You can see from the two images above (the top being the original) that I have mad subtle changes that just give the photograph more vibrancy and colour saturation. I  pumped up the brightness and contrast to make the photo clearer. You will also be able to see in the original image that in the bottom left hand corner there is a bonnet of a car sticking out and red traffic cones just off the centre of the photo. I thought that it would look much better with this removed so the focus was more on the school and so I used the clone stamp tool to take them right out of the photograph to give the appearance that they weren't there to begin with. This is the photograph I will use for the front cover of my school magazine as I feel that it captures the traditional aspect/values which was part of my aim for the target audience of parents.

This image also had very minimal editing as all I did was increase the brightness and contrast and added a tiny but of Gaussian blur to the background to make sure that the main focus was on the hand and paper in the foreground. The shallow focus on this photograph is the component that I am most please about and why I chose I have chosen to use it as one of the photo's on my contents page.

With this photograph I first boosted up the contrast and brightness to clear up the image slightly as it was quite shadowed in the original photograph. I then used the clone stamp tool to remove the dark stains on the mat underneath the Bunsen burner to clean it up a little and then I noticed that there was a random bag in the backdrop, on the table. The bag was a bit trickier to remove than the dark patches on the mat but I managed it in the end. The final edit I made was cropping the image to put the focus on the female student, as the male student in the background was pulling a strange expression and he was shadowed and so I though it would be much better without this part in the photo.

This was the final photograph I edited and again, not much was changed here. Although the editing is subtle, the adjustments make the image look a lot better. Like a lot of my photo's, I enhanced the brightness and contrast and then finally removed the strange 'happy birthday' banner and clock from the background using the clone stamp tool.

Photoshoot Final Image Choices for Prelim Task: School Magazine

Below are my final unedited photographs that I will edit and use for my school magazine. Although I am pleased with how the photographs turned out, they could still be improved through changing the exposure, brightness/contrast etc to give the images more vibrancy and appealing but still realistic look to them.

Photo shoot for Prelim Task

After creating my shot lists of possible images that I wanted to be featured on my cover and contents page of my school magazine, these ideas then became the base to frame my photo shoot. I arranged an hour slot with one of my physics teachers and the librarian a week prior to the shoot, to schedule an appropriate time when  both rooms would be free to allow me to take the photographs with enough time so that they were at the highest standard possible. I also made sure that I asked the students from year 9 who agreed to take part to fill out a release form each, giving their consent to enable me to take photographs of them. I got some shots of the students in several different locations, and then took some shots of the front of the school alone for my central image of my cover to show the traditional model. You will be able to see from the image below that some of the photo's did not turn out well at all. This is completely down to either blur from movement of the pupils or my hand, or the images becoming over/underexposed because of  an insufficient amount of light in some of the classrooms.  

Overall, I took a total of 65 photos using my own camera and I am really pleased with how the majority of the photographs turned out and a massive thank you to the students that enabled me to get them. I found the shoot really enjoyable, fairly quick and straightforward as I already had a good idea of what I was taking photos of. The only issues I came across and that I struggled with was the lighting in some of the classrooms being too bright or not bright enough for me to get decent photos. However, this allowed me to practice my skills that I have learnt on Photoshop to improve this. 

Release Forms for Prelim Task

Risk Assessment sheets for Prelim task

Photoshoot Shot List