Evaluation: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My intended audience for my magazine was young girls aged between 11 - 15, this age group is particularly hard to target as young girls tend to change their interests frequently so I had to make sure I knew that the genre of magazine I was creating would sell the to target audience that I wanted to aim it at. I had to research my target audience to find out exactly what they would want from magazine and what genre really interested them the most.

I was unsure at first on what genre to chose for my magazine I was stuck between choosing pop, indie or r&b as these were the typical genres that younger girls seem to influenced by all the time. I researched this by looking at magazines that were on the market appealing to the target audience that I wanted to appeal to. From this information I studied closely Top of the Pops, Smash Hits, Blender and Spin, they all gave me each some look into what sort of magazines my target audience read and buy.

I then created a questionnaire full of questions relating directly to my target audience to help make my magazine ideally for them and to help find out more information about my target audience and what celebrities and articles they liked the most. I also asked exactly how much they would pay for their magazine and how often they would like to recieve it. This helped me recieve exact information from my target audience to give me the help and advice I need to create my magazine this can be seen on the link below:

http://asoliviabennettcabot.blogspot.com/2011/02/questionnaire-on-music-magazines.html

Colours & Fonts

Colours and fonts used are a huge priority throughout my magazine as they help draw the audience in and catch their eye immediately. Seeing as my young audience are all female the colour scheme would typically be pink, purples and light pastel colours as these are colours that can relate to the audience almost immediately and draw the audience into buying and reading the magazine. In contrast to this I used different tones of pinks and purples to help keep the magazine more interesting and not all just one simple colour which could make the pages dull and uninteresting to the audience.

Font is another huge priority in the magazine as this can make the pages more creative and interesting, but yet the simple fonts are the ones that keep the pages much more typically of music magazines. The only unusual fonts I used were from the front cover where it says 'by you x' which makes it look like it is especially hand written and gives the sell line a creative spin and makes it seem more unique.

Photos

I had planned that I would use a studio with professional lights and white background to create my photographs and make them as clear as possible. I used an SLR camera to make sure they came out exactly how I would like them. I did a test shoot first to make sure that I tried out all the poses that would be possible for my front cover once I had officially decided what poses to chose for my front cover, contents page and double page spread which helped me plan out my final shoot much more easily and quickly.

Once my final shoot was taking place I decided to dress my model in quite simple clothes as I didnt want to attract attention from the front cover and the rest of the sell lines surrounding the main model. This ultimately shows connotations of a typical music magazine such as Top of the Pops as they tend to wear simple or plain clothing so I used these ideas and created it as my own.