Evaluating how my magazine attracted my audience.

1. How did you attract/address
your audience?
AS Media Coursework

2. What is this?
• In this part of the evaluation I will be analysing all 3 aspects of my
magazine (front cover, contents page and double page spread) in
terms of why I have incorporated certain aspects in an attempt to
address and attract my audience. As previously stated in my
evaluation, my target audience is youthful teenagers who generally
socialise on the streets, hence the reasoning for certain features of
the magazine.

3. The inclusion of social media logos attracts our youthful
audience because social media is majorly ruled by
youngsters seeing as their generation is when it has
successfully and massively progressed. For this reason,
these logos suggest our magazines features, events etc.
are accessible to witness on particular platforms too. To
highlight the intelligence behind this convention, more
than one billion people are active on Facebook, which
suggests our audience could expand as well.
Our mast head is very bold and clear, leading it to
be very easily interpreted by our audience. A mast
head that is eye-catching is more likely to attract
your audience in comparison to one that is small
and thin. Moreover, the word ‘base’ is associated
with hip-hop music as many songs have a loud and
heavy base playing in the background. This will
address our audience because it shows a direct
connection between the genre that they love, and
our magazine.
By using contrasting colours, it attracts our audience
because it makes particular elements of the magazine
stand out e.g. the mast head, which is arguably the most
important feature due to its relationship with the genre
itself. In addition, the colours complement each other.
This means that they suit each other and there are no
clashes, making the cover more entertaining and indulging
as it is easy to read. Hopefully this would be a factor that
attracts our audience.
The style of our models was also a method
used to attract our audience. Clothing shown
on the front cover consists of a camo jumper
and a face mask. Camo is worn by dozens of
hip-hop artists e.g. Kanye West, and a face
mask is a representation of Yung Lean. These
artists are role models for some of our aspiring
audience, hence why including similar
costumes will address and attract them.
Based on our target audience, the price will attract
them because it is unlikely that all teenagers have
a job due to the expectation that they go to school,
college etc. This addresses them because it makes
the magazine easily affordable as £2.00 is not a lot
of money.
The cover line ‘is the new mixtape worth all the
hype’ acts as a cliff-hanger to lure the reader
into progressing from the front cover, all the way
to the end of the magazine. It attracts the reader
because they want to be able to discover the
answer to the question. Also, the text is subject
specific to the audience. This particular jargon
consists of ‘hype’ and ‘mixtape’, which the
youthful audience will be familiar with based on
its alliance with hip-hop in general.
All these features used have been developed, or taken as inspiration from professional magazines
such as Vibe. Examples of this consist of contrasting colours, intelligent cover lines, and having a
bold mast head.

4. The funky, fruitful background of our contents
page is extremely indulging due to its contrast
with the other colours on the page. This will
attract our audience because of the abstract
nature surrounding the page. If the background
was plain and not very entertaining, it is likely to
subvert away from attracting the audience. In
comparison to professional published magazines,
they usually have quite a dull background, so we
have opted to go against this routine in an
attempt to keep the reader enticed to our
product.
Similarly to how I attracted my audience on
the front cover, I integrated real life rappers
like A$AP Ferg onto my contents page. As
already stated, these are likely to be role
models for some our audience. For this
reason, they will have an interest in reading
the article about them. This incorporation of
the Uses and Gratifications attracts our
audience because it is what they like, and
hence, what they want to read about.
The inclusion of social media once again
attracts and addresses our audience due to
their familiarity with the concept. Most
teenagers nowadays have a smart phone with
easy access to the internet, thus they can
enjoy looking at our magazines features,
events, sneak peaks etc. via a quick and
efficient way. There are different social media
logos on the contents page to the front cover
in order to represent the variety of platforms
our project is accessible on, further attracting
I have used a large main image on my
contents page that takes up half the frame
because an image is more exciting to look at
than a bunch of textual information. This
attracts the reader due to the diverse
nature of the pose and the background.
Usually on magazines, the models do a
straightforward pose and look at the
camera, whereas I have developed this
convention as my model has created a ‘W’
shape with his hands, offering more for the
reader to look at. Furthermore, the model
is also clearly a very young artist, this
means he can relate to our youthful
audience due to their similar ages, and this
further addresses them.
A fashion section addresses our audience
because it implies that there is a section about
clothing and fashion, potentially addressing an
entire new audience with different interests.
Despite this, the original teenage audience can
be interested in this too as they might take
inspiration from their favourite artists clothing,
which is shown on these pages..

5. By having two contrasting fonts it
outlines a change in topic. Futura
Heavy (top left) summarises a
picture of RyBoyDigital, whereas
Mosaic Caps (middle right) labels
the image of RyBoyDigital along
side Tapdancer. Both these fonts
are very bold and clear due to
their contrast in colour with their
backgrounds, which helps them
stand out. Mosaic Caps is very
abstract and unique too, making
this a very enjoyable convention.
One could suggest that having
the same font shows consistency,
however, it could also be argued
that it is slightly dull and boring
as well.
This feature of clothing was also used to
attract our audience on the front cover
too. Our models are wearing hip-hop
artist familiar brands, as well as very
desirable brands of clothing e.g.
Supreme. The flame like face mask (top
left) is frequently an item of attire worn
by Yung Lean, hence attracting our
audience as they are likely to listen to his
music and like his style. With Supreme, it
is also worn by multiple artists, including
Tyler The Creator, Kanye West (shown
top middle) and many more. Our
audience may aspire to be like these
artists, therefore adopting a similar style
to them.
The convention of 2 images makes
the double page spread more
appealing because having too much
textual information can be extremely
draining and dull. It offers the reader
something else to look at in a wider
variety as there are 2 artists involved,
rather than one. This convention is
developed from Vibe as they
occasionally have one image on one
half of the page, and all the text on
the other half, which is quite a
straightforward layout. In my
opinion, this layout is more complex
and better because of its diversity to
traditional double page spreads,
which will attract our audience.
The use of contrasting colours is
another convention used from
other magazines like Vibe because
it makes it easy for the reader, and
it avoids any confusion about the
text. It addresses the reader
because it enables them to read
fluently and efficiently without
misinterpretation. The contrast of
black and white is also quite
aesthetic to some due to the
boldness in contrast between the
two colours, hence attracting the
audience.

6. Conclusion:
• To conclude, I have attempted to address and attract my audience by
making my magazine as indulging and exciting as possible. This has
generally been done by using and developing conventions from
magazines like Vibe. Specifically, I have mainly used clothing, images,
social media and many other aspects to attract my teenage audience.