Evaluation: Representation

In my magazine, I have chosen to target the audience of rock fans. This means, stereotypically, predominantly male students. However, for my magazine, I decided to aim more openly in order to create a more sensible brand identity; my magazine is directed to both males and females of a teenage audience, choosing neutral but appealing language terms to communicate with the reader (straying away from using grouping terms such as 'guys' to describe my audience). This type of mature audience are usually prone to finding interest in the internet, socialising (going out, partying), playing games, reading, and studying. My front cover, contents page and double page spread are stylized in order to appeal to anyone in my target audience of teenagers/students (using 'neutral' colours like black, white, red and yellow and photos of both a male and a female) rather than directed at a specific audience - for example male students.
Kerrang! uses its model and cover line to appeal to its audience straight away with minimalistic effects of other images on the page. They stand out against bright backgrounds, whereas I went for the opposite effect and chose to have my model against a dark background. If I were to change this aspect of my magazine, I would experiment with brighter colours used as backgrounds throughout it. This may appeal more to my target audience as rock music can be very flashy and exciting, which is the approach I want to take with my magazine in order to relate to the reader. When photographing my model, I had to consider their posture, expression, choice of fashion, lighting and more in order to create the most appealing images. I chose to take inspiration from models used in other music magazines (such as Kerrang!, Q, etc.) which all supported neutral, sensible expressions and gestures which makes the product feel more professional. All of my images were shot in a studio using ambient and artificial lighting sources, and were edited in the final products to be brighter and flashier. If I were to take these photos again, I would be sure to do so in brighter light (perhaps outside) in order to stand out more against the background.

I wanted to show that my products are willing to take risks in order to create a house style and brand identity, by using a unique colour scheme and display. While I kept to guidelines using other magazines (position of header, cover line, main image etc), I wanted there to be some diversity in the type of magazine I have created compared to other largely-known magazines. 
I used colour to change up how I got points 

across, such as the large yellow stroke around
the cover line. 
My photos are all fairly similar to each other, using neutral expressions and postures to appeal to as many people as possible without being too flashy. Ways that other rock fans in photos differ to this is by using hand gestures, extravagant expressions and more excitable poses, which is something not really used on magazine covers.