Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

This is my front cover. I have chosen to put a large masthead at the top right hand corner with a red stroke which draws the audience's attention to it and makes it easier for the audience to remember it. The coverlines at the top; 'music, stars and pop' go well with the genre of my magazine which is around pop stars and music. I have used the word 'exclusive' to make the coverline stronger and stand out more than the other coverlines. Because the band 'Once' is the feature story for this issue and they are popular, their fans would buy my magazine just for them. The coverline below is a pull quote from the main article and I have highlighted 'new album' in red which connotes urgency and something special. The additional coverline below it says more about this feature story with highlighted 'birthday party photos' in yellow because yellow is also an attractive colour and it is associated with happiness. For the cover image I took a picture of my friend who pretended to be a famous singer. I added a bubble introducing the story of her being on the cover. I chose this image to be my cover picture because I think that she establishes Japanese culture very well which comes from her hair style, wearing colour contact lenses, mainly her expression and posture. At the bottom of my cover, there is a girl band and I only added a small coverline for them because they are not the main feature of this issue. There is also an unique selling point which comes from the free poster of 'Once'. I have decided to give offers to the audiences because 'Once' is my feature artists for this issue and this unique selling point is attractive for their fans and it may attract a wider audience to buy my magazine. There is the barcode, dateline and issue number at the bottom right a corner, all features which are conventional for a magazine cover.

To the left is my contents page. I put a big, bold masthead at the top left hand corner which reminds the audiences what magazine it is and helps them feel more familiar with my magazine. I put the word 'contents' next to it which shows the audiences this is a contents page and they could find the page numbers on this page. There is the dateline and the website at the top right hand corner which is a conventional feature and it will take the audiences going online to the website which makes my magazine become a synergy production. There are Japanese characters below which symbolises that my magazine is linked to both cultures, Japanese and British. I have put five different images on this page which suggests that my magazine contains more pictures than texts and it appeals to my target audiences who prefer more images. There is another conventional design to have two parts - the 'features' section and the 'regular' section. I have decided to put all the big stars in the features section and I have made up some coverlines which are popular for the regular section, such as 'crossword' and 'language assistance'. the 'language assistance' may not be popular for other style magazine, however it goes well with my Japanese style magazine and it may help some of the audiences to know more about the culture and language. Other than that, I have added a 'review' section at the end where it introduces new gadgets and products to the audiences and it makes my magazine become a synergy production whereas audiences buy product via my magazine.

This is my double page spread which is an article of an interview that I had with the band 'Once' after they have been in a gig in England. I found a suitable font on a website 'dafont.com' and placed it at the top left with an angle and added a yellow stroke for it. I then placed a subtitle below it which briefly says what the article is about. There is a kicker below the subtitle with a drop cap because drop cap quite often draws attention and hopefully the audience would continue reading the rest of the article. There is another kicker at the top on the right page to start the article and briefly introducing what they have been doing and why they are the featuring story of this issue. I then formed my article into question and answer form to make it easier for the reader and I used fairly simple language for the article which appeals to my target audiences. I added seven extra images as well as the main picture on the left, as I said that my audiences prefer more images so I have put a lot of photos on my double page spread. I also added captions for those pictures, drop shadow and strokes are used for those photographs too. I mainly used red and blue for my double page spread because they are the colours that associated with the England flag. However, the white space and red associated with the Japan flag.