My target audience was aimed at student's aged between 15-19. I chose this particular age group because this is the general age for most student's. The student's will need to have an interest in music, sport and the current entertainment. The reader's will be underachievers, radicals or succeders from what they have decided that they want to achieve from their time at college. The social values which the student may have is Hedonists as in general student's like to live life to the full and enjoy the life they have now rather than thinking about their options. They also are often more interested in having a good time rather than thinking about what may be affected because of this. On the Jicnars Scale they will be aimed at around B - C2, this is because many will still be receiving money from their parents who may be quite far up the Jicnar's Scale as they have been working for a while in their job, so are more likely to have a well paid job, they also may have a part time job to help bring more money for them to spend. Another thing I think is that they will be living single, as few students have moved in with their partners and many are not even in a serious relationship. I ensured that I addressed this audience by writing articles that would interest them. For example having contemporary music which is in the charts featured in the magazines and also popular TV programmes which students are more likely to watch at home. I think overall I was able to communicate with my audience effectively as I used features which would appeal to them and make them want to read the magazine. My text is similar to other magazines by using similar topics to lure the reader to read the magazine. It is similar to other magazines of the same topic or mainly aimed at young adults in the same age group as my target audience. You can see some of the examples of similar magazines in the
research section as I looked at other student magazines to see what information would be necessary to be included in the magazine. From other magazines I just looked at what type of topics were included and then I changed the topics to suit my magazine but still attract readers to my magazine. I tried to be original by using different cover stories and different bands to what were featured on the magazines, and also tried to make it more interesting by advertising posters and chances to win an I
pod etc on the front cover which was not shown on other student magazines which I looked at so this was original to my magazine. I think that this was successful because it would be another way to attract more readers to my magazine and also would be a difference to the other student magazines available who are in competition with me to sell magazines.
If my magazine was real it would be a low budget magazine to start out with as I would need to build up the reputation of the magazine and be able to sell magazines to make it more popular and get more profits for the magazine. Hopefully though the magazine would rise to high profit when the magazine was to be sold in many shops across the country to different students. With the extra profit coming into the magazine I would then be able to afford to pay for more things for the magazine to become more interesting, e.g. more interviews with big
celebrities and could feature more advertisements in the magazine which would also bring more profit into the production. The magazine would be distributed across the country to different colleges/universities/schools/local shops to attract the students to buy the magazine and it would be
distributed by transportation to different schools, it would have to start out as a local magazine but as profits increased then it could be sold more nationwide. My magazine is not large enough
to interest a major publisher because it does not have a wide enough
following of students to buy the magazine. To raise the interest of a major publisher I would need to make my magazine more well known amongst students so that they would regularly buy the magazine for themselves every issue so that publishers will feel that they will make a profit from publicising the product. To raise money to make my magazine more well know I could invest in advertising by going around the local schools/colleges and putting up
fliers about where the magazine is sold and where students could buy the magazine from. Also I could offer it to the students at the school at a reduced
introduction rate so that they feel that it is not too expensive and then if they read it and enjoy the magazine they may then buy later issues of the magazine
because they found it interesting before hand and then will pay the normal price. This may influence the nature of my text as I will need to make sure that the magazine appeals to all different types of students so include all the
different genres of music available and lots of different entertainment so that the magazine can appeal to the largest audience possible.
When first using Adobe
Photoshop and Quark
Xpress I found it difficult because I had never used these programs before so I did not know what all of the different features did, but to learn how to use it I just tried out all the different things beforehand so that I knew what each of the buttons did and what I would need to use to make my magazine and if I had any problems I would ask my partner to try and help me as he knew a lot more about the programs than me so could often help me out. The SLR cameras on the other hand were easy to use because it was not much different to a normal camera so taking the picture for the magazine I found was an easy task to do. The only problem that I had with the SLR camera was that I was not sure how to upload the pictures on to the computer at first, but once it had been explained to me I could easily upload the pictures whenever I needed to.
If I was to produce another magazine I may choose to use more colours on the front cover to try and make it more attractive to the readers of the magazine, and also I may have tried to think of a more inventive and catchy name so that it could be easily remembered and different to the other magazines of a similar type.
