Question 5How did you attract/address your audience?

Front Covers Compared

Masthead taking up ~50% of width Red/White colour scheme Listing down the side Key Cover Image Sticker Some form of banner

Analysis My design has been inspired by Q and NME Magazine who also aim

their magazine at the Indie genre. Having the masthead cover ~50% of the page is similar to how NME

and Q’s mastheads are displayed on the page. I decided to go against the red and white convention and go with a blue instead. I believe this helps my magazine stand out more from the others currently available. I have used similar fonts but tried to vary some of them to give the magazine a more unique feel to it.

NME have packed their front cover full of information, Q try and keep the text minimal on their front cover. I decided to go somewhere in-between the two magazines to try and get the best of both worlds, while still making sure the cover image was clearly visible and was not obstructed by any text.

My featured artist is in a much larger font than anything else on the page, this is to draw attention to the fact the magazine has content based around somebody important and to catch the readers eye to enTune itself.

Contents Pages Compared

Same layout as Q Magazine. Competition/Saving Money, same idea as NME Cross-media Convergence Page Numbers with masthead included

AnalysisMy design is greatly inspired by Q magazine’s layout for their content

page. It is nearly laid out exactly as Q magazines is. I decided to do this based on audience feedback I received early on in the task informing me that the layout Q magazine had used was very readable and made for a very professional looking contents page. I took this advice from my target audience and applied it to enTune’s contents page.

I used the same heading “Features” and “Reviews” as I felt that it was more appropriate for my target audience than simply “Contents”. I also have split the page up similar to how Q have done by having a background for the main parts of the layout. Features and Reviews are in roughly the same location too. This should help a reader to recognise enTune as an indie magazine and could potentially have readers from Q purchase both magazines.

One of the things that I didn’t see Q or NME magazine include was technological convergence. I feel that in the current era, it is vital to the success of any business to include technological convergence, especially in the form of social networking for my target audience.

Double Pages Compared

Vintage photographsInterviewsMain imageRed/White/Black Colour Scheme

AnalysisLooking through my audience feedback, I found that people

preferred the vintage effect on the photo of Lady Gaga in Q Magazine. I decided to re-use this same style in enTune’s double page spread, but I decided to go further and have the images appear as part of a photo shoot and have them with an old-style polaroid effect also. Audience feedback has told me that I have done this successfully and that the images really create a vintage affect and engage the reader.

The amount of images on this page has been shown through audience feedback to be successful in making the article seem less daunting and boring to read. This will help when people come to buy the magazine and are flicking through.

The colour scheme should hopefully portray the uni-gender side of the magazine and not single out a single gender.

Sketches > Drafts Front Cover

Stage 1: Initial Sketch of how I want the layout to be. This was based off market research into similar magazines of my chosen genre.

Stage 2: With feedback I received from my sketch, I went ahead and drafted a layout of my magazine that I thought would look quite good. I didn’t include the banner at the top on this stage. This is a mockup using artists that I was inspired by for the magazine. I didn’t include the angled banner under the masthead in this draft.

Drafts > Product Front Cover Stage 3: My Initial draft using

my artist and my edited image. Audience feedback told me I should include the banner so I included it in this version. My audience feedback told me that there wasn’t enough text on the page and that the text was too hard to read.

Stage 4: In response to my audience feedback, I included more text and changed the colours of the text, I included a sticker as somebody suggested it to me as a regular convention. A drop-shadow was added to the banner at the top in an attempt to make it stand out more on the page. After numerous changes, this is my final front cover.

Sketches > Drafts Contents

Stage 1: Initial Sketch of how I want the layout to be. This was based off market research into similar magazines of the indie genre. This design will be changed as audience feedback suggested the image was too large.

Stage 2: With feedback I received from my sketch, I went ahead and drafted a layout of my contents page that I thought looked good. This is roughly the same layout my final product uses. Audience feedback told me I should try and include a competition feature, so I have done so in the next version.

Drafts > Product Contents Stage 3: My Initial draft using

my artist and my edited image. This is roughly want my final product looks like as you can see from the two images here. My target audience informed me that most magazines included page numbers on the images to make it easy to see where the article was. There was a lot of white space so I added in social networking. My audience told me that the features box was too hard to read and that there was not enough information about each feature.

Stage 4: In response to my audience feedback, I included more text and changed re-formatted the way I displayed the features list and the page numbers. I made sure all the images were perfectly aligned and included social networking in my final version.

Sketches > Draft Double Spread

Stage 1: Initial Sketch of how I want the layout to be for my double page spread. I had this based on my research into other magazines. When I asked my target audience what they thought about this, I was informed that the band image took up too much room, as such I changed it for the next version.

Stage 2: With feedback I received from my sketch, I drafted the layout of my magazine using Calvin Harris as my artist and “lorem ipsum” as my text filler. I was unsure about this design and asked my audience feedback what they thought. They suggested a use a layout which you can see in the next version.

Draft > Product Double Spread Stage 3: This is my final draft of

my double page spread. After asking my target audience what they liked and didn’t like about the page, I found that the text was too difficult to read, that Nicole’s head in the middle image would be in the middle of a fold, and that the article didn’t look very professional.

Stage 4: In response to my audience feedback, I changed the colour of the text, and played around with the contrast of images, I have made the text much more readable and split the article up into 2 different columns. This should help to create a more professional look to the double page spread itself. The main image of Nicole is now on the left hand side of the page, and the image running down the middle of the page will not fold her face in half. This is my final version of my double page spread.

Audience Feedback