Evaluation 5- How did you attract/address your audience?

When creating my magazine I had to ensure that I was keeping my target audience in mind at all times as the magazine needs to appeal to them as they were the purpose for the magazine being created. I ensure that everything that was being added to my magazine was going to appeal to my target audience and they would be interested in the stories being added. Certain genres use similar features on there covers in order to ensure that they are going to be attracting their target audience, for example its more than likely a pop magazine is going to have lots of different things on the cover. The colour scheme will be light colours and stereotypically the colour pink will be used as much possible, they will have the latest pop band or artist on the front also. The reason why this is done is due to the fact that the creators of the magazine know that is what there target audience want to see meaning they know that it is going to sell. However my magazine was going to use conventions that were opposite to this, I used a simple colour scheme of red white and black to keep things simple and not over powering however features that needed to be made more clear were put into red to attract the attention of readers more. Rather than adding as much to my cover as possible to ensure every artist that had been featured on the magazine were included on a picture, I simply listed the artists that were going to be featured in the magazine and why they were going to be included.

The first thing someone sees about your magazine is the cover, meaning as many selling features have to be used on the cover as possible. As I am targeting a large market I had to ensure that I was using features on the cover that would appeal to everyone. This is why I chose to keep everything as simple as possible and not over powering as 18 year old males are not going to be attracted to a cover that has multiple layers of text all covering each other. The main feature of the cover is the image of the models as it takes up the most space on the cover, which denotes that they are going to be the main feature of the magazine. For anyone walking past that is a fan of the band they would purchase the magazine instantly without looking at anything else on the cover. However I also included cover lines about other artists that are featured in the magazine which may lead to many other people purchasing the magazine, due to them being fans or interested about the artists included on the cover. I ensured that my models all had direct eye contact with the camera as that makes it seem although they have direct eye contact with someone walking past the cover which would draw there attention into the cover making them want to purchase it.

As I took a different approach to R and B not going for the typical factors of sex, drugs, and alcohol I ensured that I didn't include any of these factors on my cover. However I didn't want my magazine to look overly sophisticated, meaning that I didn't use what is known as the Queens English as brief amounts of slang have been used, which keeps things slightly informal.  I kept this in mind also when creating my double page spread also as it is informal and just sounds like a conversation which will be more engaging for the audience to read, it makes it easier to read meaning they wont get bored and carry on reading, this will also influence there intentions of purchasing the magazine on a monthly basis.  On my contents page I included articles that were about females also as the images as on my magazine cover it only featured males, so by including females in the articles it will meaning that the magazine will attract the attention of male readers also as I want my magazine to attract the attention of both genres. 

Creating the name of my magazine took my a long time however I came up with the name 'Urban Vibe' in the end. This links to the fact that R and B music links to Urban, so if someone heard the name they would understand what the genre of the magazine is and the types of people that are going to be featured in the magazine. Having a name that linked with music follows a typical convention of music magazines which means that it is going to increase sales as it is a convention that all music magazines follow so is going to work for my magazine. 

When choosing my fronts I didn't want to pick anything that was childish or looked like I was trying to attract the attention of children. For the main cover lines like 'Urban Vibe' and 'T.R.B are back' I used the font 'Bebas Kal' as it was very clear and east to read, it also looks very sophisticated. I used a similar font through out as I wanted to keep the same team running through out, and not constantly changing things.

Again with keeping everything as simple as possible I didn't want to add lists onto my contents page. I didn't feel although I needed to add images of every artists that I had mentioned was going to be included in my magazine as the are extremely popular people in the music industry to from just reading their names people would know who they are. I also used the name font of 'Bebas Kal' for the word contents in order to keep things the similar and not using to many font as that would lead to things looking slightly messy and over powering. 

Overall, inorder to attract and address my target audience I followed the typical themes that my target audience would be attracted to, like a simple layout, having popular R and B artists featured on the cover and mentioned in the cover lines. I ensured that my models gave the camera direct eye contact on the cover as this gains the attention of people walking past the magazine. I ensured that I didn't add anything that would be over powering to my cover as this isn't what my target audience would be attracted to, I kept everything as simplaitc as possible and kept the same things followed throughout, I also ensured that the language used was slightly informal as that made the reading of the magazine easier and more interesting.