Audience research - focus group

 For my focus group research, I chose two male and two female (one older and one younger) to ask questions. My questions were; how old are you?, what is your occupation?, tell me a bit about yourself, who is your favourite band/artist?, and do you read magazines? Here is the responses:

Using this research, I am able to understand what type of music magazine I should do (based on genre and style) and also what type of stories to include (based on the focus group’s interests.)

Audience research - defining the audience

 

Initial ideas

Initial ideas for the music magazine:

I want my magazine to stand out and have flare to it. Therefore, I will brainstorm some of my favourite styles of magazines with my favourite artists on it and get a greater understanding of my inspiration. By doing this I can get a general idea of what kind of genre, shot type, lighting etc I want to do.

I really like how light and bright colours look on the magazines, I plan to use a landscape in the background of my images instead of just a plain coloured background. I think if I use a detailed background then it can add depth to the image and it could work really well for the music magazine.

Inspiration

 Past blogs that have inspired me: 

• https://nea8075shsg.blogspot.com/

• https://8203shsgmedianea.blogspot.com/

• https://7131shsg.blogspot.com/

Chosen brief

I have decided to choose the option of Brief 3: Magazines and online. I am interested in this brief because I think I will really enjoy the topic of Music in the magazine and also I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to music media. I think I will have fun coming up with ideas and plans to bring my vision to light. Moreover, I knew I didn’t want to do a Music Video because I didn’t like the layout of iMovie and I found it confusing, so I think using photoshop and other similar platforms for the magazine will be much easier for me and it will allow me to give the magazine my full potential.

Big Issue Prototype

Past magazine front cover - January 2024

In January 2024 - I created a Big Issue front cover of singer The Weeknd. The aim of this pretend advert was to connect with the Big Issue audience and reach out to a younger audience, I did this by evidently using popular teenage pop culture celebrity Abel Makkonen Tesfaye - who has expressed his journey from poverty to superstardom - in particular, growing up in Scarborough (Canada) where poverty and crime levels were high. I edited this cover entirely on Photoshop - where I used a picture of the star to create a warm and passionate tone with colours of red and oranges - whilst following the Big Issue’s house style of using complex styles as their backgrounds.