Target Audience Research

In terms of representation, my target audience for the social class of youth, will fall under the theorist of Stanley Hall, who claims within media teenagers aged 13-19 are moody people involved with crime, sex and drugs. This will also affect the appearance of my magazine of having to make sure it is suitable for my target audience. But in this case, a particular group of my target audience may go against this theory (6TH Formers) due to how their involved in further education doing their A Levels. To successfully represent my target audience through the masthead I borrowed from graffiti, a 'youth form of art because it is considered rebellious. 

The first question I asked to discover who my target audience were for my magazine design for a College was, "What is your age." This will give me a better understand of the age group because I will inspire me to understand they will be interested in this day and age making the magazine more and more suitable for them by following the common conventions.

 

The results of my SurveyMonkey has shown me that the target audience are aged between 17-19 years of age. So when I create my magazine I will keep this fact in mind.

 

The second question I asked my target audience was "What is your gender?" once again this will give me a better understanding of my target audience in terms of interests and stories to apply for the magazine.

Judging by the results of my survey, the target audience is both male and female, so this I will also keep this fact in mind when I go to create the flat plans for my magazine.

The social grade for my target audience is E Grade and this was important to find out about my target audience because as there's such a mass audience to attract as the magazine is aimed at school children, there are so much to considor on what to place upon the magazine. So once again, when creating the magazine front cover and contents page I will make sure I make it suitable for my target audience who are 17-19 years old, both male and female. 

 

 

I then asked if my target audience read the current Bodmin College magazine that is being produced by the school at the moment and it turns out in my results that not many of them do. This could be because its either not following the target audience's interests or it just isn't appealing to them in terms of representation and to back up this fact is the next questions results.

To get a better understanding of my target audience's current interests and gives me a better influence upon the designs their currently interested in, the results of my survey shows my target audience are interested in the Vine magazine, this could be in terms of design/presentation or contents. Also to support this and study it further I asked my target audience why would they read a College magazine and it turns out they would read it and the results from my survey have shown they would read it for informational purposes; falling under the Blumer and Katz theory.

  

I gave power to my target audience on selecting the final masthead through pasting possible options onto my SurveyMonkey. Below are the comments this design received:

After analysing my results I have noticed that the majority of my target audience prefer the first masthead or the last design, which will be easier to inspire me to create my magazine judging by the design of my flats plans. So within my final results I will use either of these mastheads because then it will make my magazine more suitable for my target audience.