Audience Research

I created a questionnaire which I asked many different people to fill out around the college. I included questions which would help me to decide how my front cover should look and what would appeal to students between the ages of 16 and 18. My results showed me the students like the magazine to look fun and interesting rather than something which looks too plain and boring. Because of this questionnaire I decided to make my front cover less conventional by having a black and white main image with a coloured background. This will make the magazine appear more interesting to the student.

I analysed other magazine covers to help me decide what looked good on a front cover and what didn't. There is an example of my analysis of a front cover on my blog. There are certain things that nearly every magazine cover uses, such as mastheads at the top of the page, and at least one image on the front cover. I decided that the best way to make a magazine successful would be to stick to the conventions of a magazine. If you break the rules too much the magazine could appear strange to the student and it could seem unappealing. I found out the the target audience like to see images and symbols on the page rather than just writing. This is why I decided to add a bubble with writing in, and also the tick symbol on the page.

Overall I believe that my magazine cover could definately be improved a lot but it has the main ideas that most students suggested and I think it would be appealing to a lot of college students.