Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My magazine is highly representative of youth culture, whilst also aiming to appeal to an older, more musically aware/appreciative audience. It makes regular reference to pop/indie/rock/country (and more) artists, appealing to many areas of the social spectrum when concerning taste.

My front cover (as shown to my left) is supposed to appeal to a wide audience, from fans of Punk Rock, through to Alternative and Indie Rock. My model (Lewis Wiseman) was styled similarly to that of Jake Bugg in an issue of NME from a few years ago. Jake Bugg sets a great precedent to follow due to his rugged look, combined with his country/folk genre. It creates diversity and he stands as an extremely good example of an artist held in high artistic regard within the music industry, appealing to people of all ages; and to both genders. Whilst attempting to avoid any sort of plagiarism of Jake Bugg as an artist, I have given Lewis a new genre and a slightly varied look, whilst attempting to imitate the visual effect Jake Bugg has on his massive audience base.

The style of the writing is designed similarly to styles shown by ‘EMPIRE’ (non-music magazine), with a bold, alluring font and lots of colour, whilst remaining with a simplistic colour scheme. My Masthead is designed to represent a rugged, urban look, reminding the audience of the magazine's Rock/Punk influence. Finally, the ‘Lemon/Milk’ font style repetitiveness displayed for the all outlying font on the page (aside from Lewis’ band ‘trademark’ font) is to show a subtle yet ‘in your face’ style, attracting the audience with its large size and sharp look, before becoming more pleasant to the eye with its smooth look. This is not only a technique I’ve used to attract my audience, but also one representative of what the magazine is all about.

The contents page is designed with order in mind. I decided that this is, in most cases, the page that defines the structure of the magazine for the readers how they feel about the layout of the magazine. This page is the one that contains information concerning (as the name would likely suggest) the contents of the remainder of the magazine. This, to me, means that the audience needs to be able to read the contents adequately, as well as being attracted to the overall look in order to bring appeal to the other articles in the magazine.

For the contents page, I had the opportunity to appeal more broadly to a larger target demographic. I did this by including fonts similar to the front cover, but also by using a mixture of artists from a mixture of genres to populate the bulk of my magazine in articles and information. I intended to use relevant bands of today, whilst making regular reference to older, more seasoned artists (James Taylor and AC/DC, for example). In doing this, I would like to create a connection between the magazine and its audience, whilst also simultaneously increasing the age and gender of the audience. These bands include not only those attracting a male audience, but also new, popular bands such as First Aid Kit and Wolf Alice.

Finally, my double page spread is a particularly diverse example. For this piece, I interviewed 55 year old, singer/songwriter, Junior Dayvis. I used fonts shadowing that of the cover and contents in order to bring familiarity to the DPS, allowing for a trademark look; yet whilst different enough to reveal the indie/country/folk/blues style of the artist. Colours were chosen to mimic and compliment the woodland background of the photo of Junior, further connoting the artist’s stylistics.one final touch of design by myself to reinforce the artists folk/country roots is in the use of a ‘typical cowboy themed’ font for his name (stand first) at the top of the right hand theme. The use of such a font is to suggest both elegance and ruggedness combined, reflecting the artist and his lifestyle.