Audience Feedback On Mock Up Magazine

I asked a few peers to leave some feedback on my mock-ups so I knew what I needed to do to improve them. Above is what they put down.

Indie Pop Contents Page Mock

By creating a mock up contents it gave me an idea of the overall layout and what it is that I need to include; however it looks very simple and too linear so this is an area which will require a lot of improvement to getting to the final product.

Indie Pop Double Page Spread Mock

I also created a DPS layout which I plan to follow for my final product as it looks professional but still quirky so will attract my audience ;however I plan to change the article as a story on how an artist is dealing with hate is quite boring and negative so will not attract my audience. Perhaps for my final product I will do an exclusive interview on a love story between two artists as this will appeal to my audience far more.

Indie Pop Magazine Cover Mock

I created a mock-up of my magazine which allowed to construct an initial design for my product and allowed me to put down all my ideas and see how they looked in advance before making the real final product. I will get some audience feedback on this mock-up cover from my target audience to see what works well and what doesn’t.

Analysis Of Indie Pop Magazine Covers

Before the construction of my Indie pop Magazine I decided to look at a couple more covers within the genre so I could follow the conventions.

Masthead Design Drafts

I experimented with the appearance of my masthead on Photoshop, to find out what worked best for my magazine. I decided to go with the fourth one down as it represented Indie as being the dominant genre and pop being the secondary genre. I decided to go with the black and white colour scheme as it follows the conventions of traditional magazine to make it look professional and added a pale red as my main colour as it symbolises passion such as Q and NME. It is more of a pink than red as it will attract my target market as it is aimed towards females. The mast head is one of the most important features of a magazine cover as it is what will catch the viewers eye in a store and through doing this research I was able to find out what worked the best for my magazine. I decided to go with the name 'Indie-Pop' as it is straight to the point in representing the magazine genre without any confusing double meanings and is also fun to say.
HOWEVER in the end after consulting with my audience I discovered it sounded too much like a kids magazine so settled upon 'Indie etc.' instead as it is better fitting and more quirky.

Target Audience Research

I created a small focus group consisting of people within my target audience and asked some questions related to the construction of my own media product. This was a good method of market research as I got information directly from the people I will be targeting. The volunteers were from ages 16-18 (which is within my age group for my audience profile of 16-30) female (as I will be attracted a predominately female audience) besides one male who was there as part of a secondary audience and to provide a male gaze. This was extremely helpful as I learnt things like what price people will be willing to pay, what colours they like, which artists they enjoy. Overall the main thing which I took from this focus group is that people who enjoy Indie-pop music are all about up and coming artist so will be introducing a new artist for my cover and DPS, but overall everything which was said will influence my decisions when it comes to the creation of my real media product.