The document discusses how the magazine attracts its target audience of indie rock fans. It uses color schemes common in indie rock magazines like reds, greys, gold and black. The front cover features a casual mid-close up shot of an artist to appear professional but not flashy. Font choices are simple and easy to read. The content page includes images and previews of articles as well as social media links. Double page spreads keep layouts simple with a single featured image and black background to make text and artists stand out.
1. 5. How did you attract/address your audience?
When looking firstly at my front cover, when researching indie rock and indie rock
magazines the colour scheme is very important, the use of reds, greys, gold and black,
slightly dull colours is something common in an indie rock magazine so when trying to make
my magazine attract to those who like or wish to buy an indie rock/indie/rock magazine I
had to use this colour scheme to attract this kind of audience. The image itself had to look a
professional looking one, usually of just one person, giving direct address, wearing casual
clothing and not really doing anything, usually just standing and looking towards the
camera, that’s what I did for my front cover, my artist didn’t have bold fancy clothing on,
she had casual clothes on, she was giving direct address and not doing any actions just
standing, although you can’t see much of her due to the fact it is a mid-close shot, many
indie rock/rock/indie magazines use also mid close ups of the artist. The masthead is a
simple font, along with the rest of the font in the magazine, it is a simple easy to read font,
the masthead of the magazine is bold, black font to stand out but also look professional
looking so it does appeal to young adults and not young children. The whole idea of
ethnicity issue and stereotypes of indie rock social groups being just mainly white people,
the artist on the front cover being a mix race girl, also dealing with the gender issue too, I
wish to make sure my magazine gives a positive attitude towards people with different
backgrounds. I feel the layout of my front cover is very professional, not too bold and eye
capturing like some magazines which showsit’s not aimed really young people but instead.
The content page, when looking at other magazines such as Q and NME content page, I was
able to use their style to try and make a very indie/rock/indie rock content page, they tend
to again use a lot of dull colours with images to stand out and not make the page look
boring and just full of writing, also giving a preview of what is going to be in this week’s
magazine, I wanted to put a social section where the audience could connect on the
internet with this magazine, putting social links to their twitter, Facebook and their website
to connect with the modern day society. I still did what every other magazine does and have
group titles/sub headings of the sections of the magazines like news, gossip etc.
When creating my double page spread I looked at many examples of double page spreads
from magazines such as Q, NME, and Clash etc. I was able to see that they keep their double
page spreads simple, they don’t have loads of images on the double page, it tends to have
just the one main image of the artist/band, not really doing anything like some magazines
who have the artist/band doing something to link to the article like when for example when
Dizzee Rascal’s double page spread in NME he links the idea of tags in graffiti to the pose he
is doing in the image of using a spray can on a wall, in mine the image just shows the artist
with a black background and white writing. The black background makes the writing and the
artist to stand out to show their importance to the magazine. Although I feel that maybe my
double page spread isn’t very indie rock like due to the black background, it being not a
natural background or a very professional photo-shoot image.