Question 5- Addressing the audience
I addressed my audience by making sure I included subjects that my audience would be interested in e.g. art, culture, fashion and music. I included musicians that I thought my audience would listen to so that when the cover is seen on a shelf the audience would be interested because the magazine is featuring someone that they would want to read about e.g. I blame coco and Grace Jones. Although I did include Jessie J who has since become very successful, I originally chose her because she was an unknown upcoming act which is something that I wanted my magazine to be associated with. Personally, I find that if a magazine features an artist that I am really into, it doesn’t matter whether it is a magazine that I frequently read or one that I had never seen before, this opens up the magazine to a new prospective audience of people that might not have heard of the magazine before. Although the magazine is aimed at a niche market, in terms of profit it is always good to be looking towards broadening the reader population.
I had known from the beginning of the project, who was going to be my audience. I ended up including over five items from my original mood board. I think by having a clear idea of my audience it allowed me to structure my photos, fonts, articles etc. a lot easier because after my research I was able to choose things that I know my audience would be interested in.
I chose to include Vivienne Westwood because she is politically subversive and creates unique clothes and styles since she first emerged as one of the first designers to bring punk clothes into mainstream fashion. Orschel Read was included again because it speaks to an audience of individuals and aspirers, he is an up-and-coming designer from London who has become very successful in men’s fashion over the last few years and I have seen his brand grow and hopefully this is the sort of thing that would inspire my readers to do a similar thing. Also Stefan Orschel Read designed a pair of trousers which lady gaga wore for a television appearance (as in the picture), which is a great association for the magazine to have.




By using descriptive and personal language it makes it seem more written for purpose, although I have not used a particularly colloquial style it still comes across in a way that is easy for the audience to relate to, and hopefully conveys the journalist as the sort of person that the reader might want to be friends with. I also used fonts and images that I thought my audience would respond well to, I used hand written fonts to reflect the ideologies of the audience and I used costumes in the photos that I thought would reflect the sort of things that my audience might want to wear. With the contents page I used a live music shot which is another thing that I think would be associated with my target audience as I wrote in my planning material, my audience is far more likely to go out to see a live band play rather than go to a nightclub or disco which are often seen as a more ‘chavvy’ night out something that my audience would not want to be associated with unless it was in an ironic way.
I would say the unique selling point to my magazine is that it is a fashion and music magazine which does not single out one gender as its target audience, although it does lean towards the female audience it certainly not one sided. On the whole indie music magazines are aimed at males and fashion magazines are aimed at females, by creating one that appeals to both sexes I am able to double my potential audience.