RESEARCH Audience Research

I asked 20 people in the age range of 15 to 30 about the type of Modern Music Magazine that would appeal to them. I included many different aspects to make the data accurate, meaning that I can create a magazine that will catch the attention of readers and make them wish for more!

My research shows that the most popular font style for music magazines are Serif Sans fonts. This is due to the modern look and appeal of them, as well as the ease to read them.
This result met my thoughts of what would be the preferred font, due to the popularity of it in current music magazines. This confirmed result will ensure that I am targeting the right people when publishing my music magazine, as well as providing me with confidence that it will be enjoyed by my target audience.

My research shows that the main reason that people in my targeted age range read magazines is to find out about new artists.
This result surprised me as I thought that people in this age group would be more interested in gossip, or information about latest events as this would give the reader something to talk about with their friends or family or give them something to do in their spare time. When planning my magazine, I will use this information to ensure that a large part of my content is dedicated towards information profiles of new artists.

My audience research shows that many people in this age group find the boxy and simple look of Q magazine as the most preferred house style, followed closely by the more colourful and minimalistic, Billboard Magazine. This result partially surprised me. I would have thought that Billboard magazine, would have been a more suited magazine due to its modern the colourful designs that help break up the large masses of text more for their feature articles. On reflection, I shall use this data to ensure that my house style is colourful but still shows a large degree of modernisation whilst keeping the cover lines to a minimum.

My research showed that the majority of people preferred the front cover of a magazine to be quite tidy and linear, rather than busy and crowded which could lead to confusion.
I had mixed feelings about these results because you often see people reading magazines that have everything that is inside the magazine, just thrown on the front to help draw people in. However, naturally, our brains prefer things to be neatly organised and we like` to read things in a certain order, rather than sort through the chaos to find what we are looking for.
In reflection, I would use these results to ensure that when planning the design for my magazines, I keep it all very linear and sequential.

My research showed that the vast majority of people preferred a Black, White, Yellow and Purple colour scheme. This colour scheme would provide a large variety of different colours and does not target any particular genders or age groups. Being colour-blind, I see colours differently to other people and what may appeal to them may not appeal to me, so it was important to gain some accurate data for this question to ensure that I supplied what my target audience wanted. This information shall greatly influence the choices of colours of my magazine as I would not have guessed any of those colours to go together.

My research shows that this question was quite debatable, as the results showed that there were two evenly popular genres, rock and pop. This did not surprise me as I know that there are many people that like these genres due to them often being at the top of that charts and at numerous music festivals, however, I would have thought that pop would have been slightly more popular. When planning my magazine, I shall use this data to ensure that the colours, content, images and graphics are all relevant to those genres to ensure that they appeal to the reader.