Genre –

According to vocabulary a genre is “A genre is a specific type of music, film, or writing. Your favorite literary genre might be science fiction, and your favorite film genre might be horror flicks about cheerleaders.”

The genre that I have choose to do my project on is Technology e.g, Gadget magazines.

Enterprise-Ireland-Magazine-Article-300311

 

When looking at the comment codes and conventions for my chosen genre the first one that comes to mind is the images that are on the spread and the cover lines that goes hand in hand with them. I personally think this is one of the reasons the reader either purchase or doesn’t because they either like the articles that are I’m that issue or not. I also think the imagery is a big code and convention, this is because the reader most of the time hasn’t got any of the “future tech” or the more expensive items, so they use the images to imagine them owning the items and what it would be like to have them. This also then links to the target audience of been of a young age, this been on the ammonite of words in the magazine. People at that age are not a big fan of reading pages and pages of information, they just want the spersifics to be there and for them to be straight to the point. There are more common codes and conventions when it comes to this genre, some been the title, price tag and colour schemes. Within some magazines in this genre the colour schemes can be a big deal, making the magazine stand out from the competition in any genre is hard and this is no different when it comes to technology. Having contrasting colours helps with making the cover and articles stand out, this is because choosing these types of colours clash off of each other and makes everything pop.

 

Target audience –

From looking on the National Readership Survey, the number of people who purchased “Stuff” magazine in print monthly and are 15-34 is 100 thousand. The number of people who purchased the magazine online was higher at 144 thousand, this been a 140.2% increase with PC visitors.

When looking in to what is a target audience and the importance of understanding your target audience I found that there can be main different forms of an audience. First I found out what is a target audience and it is a “Particular group of people, identified as the intended recipient of an advertisement or message. Also called target population.”

When I comes to knowing your target audience its important you get it right. This text shows use as the reader the benefits of magazines knowing there target audience; ““When you are speaking you want the readers to understand and respond favourably to what you are saying. An audience is one or more people who come together to listen to the speaker. The audience may be face to face with the speaker or they may be connected by communication technology such as computers or other media. The audience may be small or it may be a large public audience. A key characteristic of public speaking situations is the unequal distribution of speaking time between speaker and audience. What does this mean? The speaker talks more and the audience listens, often without asking questions or responding with any feedback. In some situations the audience may ask questions or respond overtly by clapping or making comments.”

Magazines target their audiences in many different ways; looking at just this one you can see that one has done good but not totally hit the nail on the head because when looking at the media pack it says “79% of NME readers like to listen to new bands” which is a huge percentage of. Starting with NME here is some points that I have found on Slide Share-

“Front Cover the ‘NME’ magazine front cover reaches its target audience in different ways. The genre of the music in this magazine is clearly represented by the image of the band which in this issue is ‘The Arctic Monkeys’. The band has a genre of indie rock music. Indie rock is usually quite relaxing calming music which enables bands to explore sounds and 2442emotions which in this issue contrasts with the font and font colour, both being quite bland. The good points of this magazine cover are that it contains cover lines which give the audience more information on what the magazine contains. If there were any bad points are that the text is a little cramped in the lower area of the page. Contents Page, the contents page reaches its target audience by showing well known artists of the genre of the magazine. The contents show many indie rock artists also with little cover lines below the images. The articles featuring on the contents page are in non-chronological order. The subheadings are mainly worded to entice the audience to read them, including phrases that could cause controversy. The contents page also contains an advertisement for ‘NME’ readers to try and make more money for the company. The good points are that with the titles of the articles the audience will be encouraged to purchase the magazine and read the articles. Double Page spread, the double page spread reaches its target audience in a similar way to the contents page. It contains all of the acts performing at the CMJ awards 2011. It figures some of the well-known artists of the indie rock and a brief summary of their profile. The good things about this double page spread are that the artists are in chronological order in which order they are performing, but the page aspects of this spread is that the colour schemes are quite bland, similarly to the cover.”

This is an example of a magazine that has done well when it comes to targeting there audience.

 

 INDUSTRY- 

The company that produces Stuff magazine is called Haymarket Media Group. Haymarket publishes similar magazines a lot of which are car magazine, for example “Auto sport, Autocrat, CAT, Classic & Sports Car, F1 Racing, FourFourTwo, Motorsport News, Piston Heads, Practical Caravan, Practical Motorhome, PC Authority, Racer” but it also does publish Stuff magazine. The company started in 1950s and later went on to produce an influential (if unprofitable) men’s consumer magazine. If I had to choose a producer to produce my magazine it would have to be Haymarket because they know what to do to make something stand out in the crowd. After reading about their history of the other magazines, mine will fit in to the genre and target audience that I want to create and have.

 

CONCLUTION – 

From all the research that I have done (primary and secondary) I can conclude that I have decide on the main codes and conventions, which include having an eye catching image that draws the reader in to reading it whilst having contrasting colours that play off each other the help with this. I will also have coverlines on the front page that tells people key information that looks good but its useful. All of these codes and conventions will help to target my audience and specific genre of a technology magazine.

I can also conclude a number of factors that these types of magazines use to target their audience which in my case is 16 to 24, just a few of these things are; using simple language as younger people are less educated and will be able to understand it easier, plenty of colour and images to make it look more appealing and more stimulating because of the education factor, a low price for the magazine so that younger people are able to afford it. This may be because they are students or in a job that doesn’t pay enough to have a disposable income. Finally having the price very small so that it does not discourage people to purchase it. All these things are factors which contribute to targeting the audience 16-24, which is the target audience I will be aiming my magazine at.

From doing this research, I can conclude that my aim is to produce a double page spread and a front cover on technology. One of my article and double page spreads will be on how technology has changed throughout three generations. I am planning on talking to my grandparents and parents on what there experiences of technology when they were 17 and a 17 year old now. I am also going to talk to them about what there views on technology were and is now in 2016. This will include images of technology from there years. The other article will be a review of a piece of technology of my choice that I think people want to know more about and I will talk to people before to make this decision. I will be taking up close images that have lots of detail that show off the product. Then I will choose an appropriate font that goes well with the genre of the magazine and a colour scheme to match. I also want to achieve a fairly clean layout, avoiding over crowded pages, to much useless information that doesn’t allow the magazine to easy on the eyes and easy to follow. I have decided this because when I look at the results from my surveys on my moodboards, most people said that they like the tidy designs. Using all the information I have collected so far it will help to to succeed in producing a magazine that links to my target audience.

 

Bibliography –