Focus Group analysis:

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

give branding of a model.