Further Audience Research

Once I had drawn up all my sketches and for my planning of my magazine I then showed them to some audience members for their constructive criticism.

First of all I showed and talked them through the design for my front cover. They said how they agreed that the magazines they were used to buying only used colours in the background and they had never seen a mainsell against another sort of background. But they did say how they don't see why it couldn't work and it may make my magazine stand out more. But they said that they were more interested in the content of the front cover and what was included so they said that if I was to go ahead with the different backdrop then make sure it doesn't draw the attention away from the text and other pictures.

They liked the name of my magazine and said it fitted and worked well with my chosen genre and that as a reader and a buyer they could tell easily what the magazine was going to be about.

They thought that my positioning of boxes, texts and pictures worked well but they did say how I had to be carefull not to inculde to much on the front cover as this was what the contents page was for so not all the main selling features and artists had to be on the front page.

One feature that did attract their eye, even in sketch form was the freebie and they thought this would go down well with the readers and was a good feature to include in my magazine.



When I showed them my contents page they thought it looked clear, easy to understand and also well organised. They liked the idea of spreading it over two pages and having certain sections for the different features in the magazine. They said that all the boxes (where pictures will be) fitted together and didn't look out of place and looked neat and tidy but also made the reader think that there was alot included in the magazine so it was value for money.

They were also attracted to the picture of the Banjo and said that advertising this article on the artists page as it stood out from the pictures of artists.

They thought that the splitting of articles into different sections worked well. These sections were Pure Guitar, New Music, Folk Instruments and Music and Musical Goings On.

Their reasons for liking these sections was because as a reader you pick the magazine up because something on the front cover has caught their eye, so now with these sections they can go straight to the section they think that article will be under instead of searching through the entire contents page.

Finally I showed them my idea for my double page spread. They said that the advertising on one whole page was a common feature that they noticed regulary in existing magazines and that they thought it was interesting to see the adverts and sometimes they appealed to them if the advert was something interesting.
They said that the lay out of the article on one of the featured artists was neat and looked good and where I placed the pictures didn't look out of place.
They also thought that the seperate box at the bottom added something interesting to the page and was quite a nice feature to include, seperate to the article.