How did you attract/address your

audience?AS Media Coursework

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.

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 mostimportant 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 indulgingas 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 attractthem 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 lotof 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.

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 tosubvert 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 our audience.

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..

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.

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.