Target Audience Analysis of Existing Products

A segment of the questionnaire that my target audience filled out was a question about existing music magazines. I displayed four different covers of music magazines and asked them to name one positive and one negative about each of the covers.  The whole point of this was to help me learn from the mistakes of existing magazines and to utilise the positive factors pointed out to me.

The first cover was from Q magazine.

Positives: easy to see the artist, very eye-catching, pretty photo, nice make-up, good artist, bold image, like the red, not too much writing, nice hair.

Negatives: not enough colour,  writing is too small, its a bit dull, looks a bit fake, boring.

From this cover I have learnt that my target audience prefer a bit more colour on the cover of magazines and that this layout is deemed a bit boring. Therefor I will try to make my magazine cover bright and more exciting, I think this will be achieved through there being more than one image.




The second cover was Smash Hits.

Positives: like pink,  lots of artists, its a well known magazine,  very bright, interesting information.

Negatives: don't like yellow, a bit messy, too many pictures,  too much going on, the man looks too serious, the grid of photos looks a bit formal.

Through looking at this cover, I can see that pink is obviously a well-liked colour choice as many of the people I asked liked this feature of the cover. So I will definitely use the colour pink in my colour scheme. However it seems this layout was deemed a bit too messy and unorganised, and so will need to find the mid ground between the first cover and this one.


The third was a Top of the Pops cover.

Positives: lots of pictures, pretty blue, colours compliment each other, quite simple layout, the artist, really bright, i like the yellow.

Negatives: don't like yellow, don't like boxes, the bar code is in the middle, too masculine looking, a bit dull.

This layout got the most positive response out of the covers I showed my target audience. So I will aim to replicate this sort of layout as it doesn't seem too boring or cluttered. However the colour scheme was a bit more controversial as some thought this was too masculine yet others really liked the blue. I think the blue does work however it needs to be paired with a more feminine colour such as pink or purple.   



The final was a We Love Pop cover.

Positives: quirky photo, colours, fun fonts,  nice logo, like pink, the artist, consistent colour scheme, really fun, groovy design, title stands out.

Negatives: too busy, messy, some pictures too small, too many pictures, a bit cluttered, writing not clear enough, too much information.

My target audience seemed to react well to the individuality of this cover however they felt this contained too much information and so I will try to recreate the fun tone of this cover however paired with a less chaotic layout. 


This activity has proved really helpful in the design of my front cover as I can now see what would be good for my music magazine and what wouldn't be as useful.