I had conducted this focus group to get primary feedback about my
final magazine to the same target audience who the magazine is aimed at. The purpose of this is to learn which areas were successful to make this magazine professional and which areas were not as successful. Therefore, I had asked a series of questions to Male British Youths who were aged 16-21. Despite this, I had also asked someone who was outside target audience as they were female. This was to get an outside perspective as they could give feedback on more general matters that were involved in the magazine such as layout questions or fonts. Overall, I obtained a majority preferred reading with some minor positional readings. Firstly, for the front cover all four of the people asked believed that the front cover stood out and looked professional (Question 1 & 2). Direct quotes included The Black and White visual effects may it look very appealing. This was therefore successful as I had aimed to make my magazines front cover look professional by me emulating the same effect that was used in a cover of XXL Magazine where they had Lil Wayne in black and white and the cover lines and masthead were in red. Also, a member of the focus group mentioned that the front cover stood out due to the header having: familiar artists that anyone can find interest in, not just rap audiences. This shows that not only I have successfully addressed my audience by using well known rappers (because of implementation from results I had found in my questionnaire in the research task), I have also allowed the magazine to be accessible to a niche audience of people who are not as interested in rap but selective mainstream successful rappers for example Eminem or Jay Z. Again I had found a majority reading from the question related to the contents page. All the members of the focus referred to the simplistic and organized layout of the three columns. Also, the focus group mentions that the usage of sub-headings made the magazine user-friendly this is because everything is split into specific categories. Hence, readers who are interested in reviews only can find the reviews faster than having to read through every single article. The double page spread was successful in presenting branding well. Comments in response to this question mentioned that the consistency of the black and white theme allowed the connotations to the artist to be made. For example, one individual had said that the consistency gives the impression of the artist being serious but the elements of red shows the rebellious side to hip/hop, hence me also representing the genre.
I had asked a general question related to the font choices of the
magazine which had all given the preferred reading that the font choices were correct. Members of the focus group mentioned the usage of a Sans Serif font allowed easiness in reading because it wasnt too scripted (more hand-writing type font) which would be too curly to read in big blocks of text. This conveys that I had made the correct judgment as I was representing the genre and target audience effectively. This is because my target audience of the magazine would be from a middle to lower social class and hence would not come from a high formal background where a script like font would look more upscale. but a Sans Serif font looks not basic to audience as in condescending but rather not too complicated to put off readers. There is representation of genre of this through font choices as script like fonts would be more suited to classical magazine as classical music is targeted towards an older and higher social class for a target audience. I did receive some oppositional reading to the question related to colour scheme. An individual was unsure of whether the rap magazine was fully representing through this colour scheme due to an existing rock magazine of NME using the same colour scheme of blacks with red. However, to counter this in my construction I had taken shots that had mise-en-scene (theory of everything in the shot for a reason), which reinforced that it was a hip/hop magazine. This is because in my research task and previous knowledge that hip/hop has always been about the luxury side of life and thus I had used props of chains and rings for the front cover to make it clear the model was a rapper. My final question was related to who the members of the focus group personally believed the final magazine was aimed at. Due to the representation of the gender in the magazine the members of the focus group knew the magazine was aimed at males. This is because they believed that there is a minority of females in the rap industry. They were all correct as they believed that the magazine was aimed at young audience aged around 16-21, some members referred to how the usage of social networks made it clear it was for someone who wasnt old. Plus, due to the price they assumed the magazine was aimed at someone from a middle social class as the magazine is 2.99 and thus relatively cheap and hence accessible. Finally, ethnicity was made clear by a member of focus group as they referred to the roots of rap being a more, black ethnicity populated genre. To conclude, through the feedback from the focus group I believe my final magazine was effective, as the target audience directly knew how they were addressed and the genre was addressed through general impressions of the magazine. This was also reinforced by me asking someone outside the target audience because they were
able to find elements of the magazine such as the usage of props to