- QUESTION 3 -

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience Feedback

Audience feedback was vital for the development of my magazine, and I was referring to my focus group throughout in order to get ideas on the direction I want the magazine to go in.

I had a focus group of 20 members all between the ages of 16 and 29. This is helpful as my target audience was 16-30 year olds.

Their feedback was very helpful and it definitely influenced my decision making throughout the production.

Drafts

I would say that the feedback from my drafts were probably the most helpful as the audience gave me quite a long list of suggestions on what to change and add in order to make the production pieces more effective.

For example one suggestion was to add some colour to my features page to make it seem a bit more youthful, I took their suggestions into account and changed the clear semi-transparent text box to blue. My target audience agreed when they saw the new features page that it was more appealing to my target audience.

Personal Opinions

Sophie, who's 18, commented on my front cover; she said that she really likes the image and thinks it shows the area in a positive light but unlike a lot of regional magazine front covers it doesn't seem to target the 40+ audience. She thinks this is mainly due to the cover-lines which for instance, mention a competition aimed specifically at young musicians and also says that there are articles by bloggers which she believes are particularly appealing to the teenage area of my target audience. She also really likes the house style of black, white and orange. She thinks that it's an unconventional choice but works really well, making the magazine look fairly youthful and attractive. This shows that my decision to challenge the usual house style of regional magazines paid off and does appeal to my target audience. One part of the front cover Sophie wasn't that sure on was the spacing between the cover-lines, she thought it looked a bit too spaced out and thought that it didn't really follow the usual conventions of regional magazines. I do agree with Sophie however, due to all the boats in the harbour, adding text or even moving it up slightly makes it very difficult to read.

Personal Opinions

Jasmine, who's 17, commented on my features page; she said that she really loves the image and believes it's very appealing for the target audience. She said that she really liked that although you can see the background it's blurred making the model the entire focus of article. I challenged the usual conventions by doing this as features pages usually either show the background in full focus or have none at all. She also said that because the model is within the same age as my target audience it makes it very easy to relate to her. She also said that younger members of my target audience could see her as a role model and someone to look up to. However she wasn't as keen on the contents page, saying it didn't look as professional as the other pieces of production. She said that individually she liked the different aspects such as the arrangement of the 5 images but all together it looked a little bit messy.

Personal Opinions

Jason, who's 24, commented on my advert. He said that he liked the advert in general and said it was very effective however he said that it was a lot more appealing to people in their late 20's and above. He said that he personally doesn't think this is much of a problem as he believes the rest of the magazine was more appealing for the younger part of the target audience so he said this advert evens it out. He thinks it looks dramatic and is very attention grabbing, and believes that this may be due to the simplicity of the advert, he doesn't think it would be anywhere near as effective if it was more 'busy'.

Personal Opinions

Chloe, who's 19 commented on my two ancillary tasks. She said she found the final billboard to be very effective and said the simplicity got the magazine across very well. She said that she believes it's a good form of advertisement and would 'check it out' if she saw the billboard.She also looked at the website, which she thought looked professional and linked very well with the billboard. She liked the range of articles that were available and thought the layout looked sophisticated which keeps in line with with the magazine as a whole, however she did say that I could've added a few more features or articles to make it look even more realistic.