Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Evaluation

The target audience for our magazine was for the young adults, aged 16-19, who live in a student environment and have a liking for extreme sports, be it skateboarding, BMXing, rollerblading, snowboarding, surfing, anything that would be considered more extreme and less team based. We addressed this audience firstly with our main image. It was of a student of the same age as the audience, and being that the brief was to have a mid close up and so we incorporated a small skateboard/ tech deck in the shot, with a questioning look upon the model. Due to the fact that the model wasn’t dressed very mainstream it related more to the individualist audience we were trying to reach. What also communicates successfully to the audience would be the font used, as it is slightly rebellious what definitely relates to the extreme sport culture.
The font itself, ‘the hard way’, as mentioned before looks a fair bit like graffiti. Many extreme sport magazines within the industry tend to use a rugged sort of font- for example sidewalk’s masthead has bullet holes in it and looks a bit worn.
Obviously we couldn’t follow the rules of many magazines as the brief wouldn’t allow it, so to be different from other extreme magazines in the media, instead of a shot of a whole persons body performing a trick, we decided to squash it down a bit by replacing a big skateboard with a little one. Also to be a bit different we decided to add a filter effect to our image to make it more unique and less colourful, sticking to a strict theme of orange and black. However we weren’t sure if this worked as it makes the image harder to make out and this may frustrate some buyers, yet from feedback given the uniqueness was enough to sell and be appealing to the more individualist audience.
If the magazine were real I’d expect it to be slightly low budget as there aren’t many extreme magazines out there that are. This could well bring about the interest of major publishers who would be willing to print it. However the audience itself may be its downfall as it is such a small audience and would be hard to make money off of. However, as it relates to students we could get a lot of support from schools and collages and with their help, through maybe advertising within the magazine and possibly out.
A couple new experiences I had were with using Quarck Express and using the SLR cameras. The cameras themselves weren’t to awkward once id gotten used to them, however, Quarck was not the same. It was certainly the most awkward programme I’ve come across. However, like most things, the longer you play around with it the easier it becomes to use.
Finally, if we were to do it again then I would probably take more preparation in terms of clothing for the character. That way if it was colour coordinated there would be no need for the filter effects which do tend to confuse things. But all in all I’m quite happy with the results.