Question 2 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Modes of address are important while designing a media product. The media product must communicate in a way that’s suitable for the target audience, be it teenage girls or adult males. To do this successfully, the encoder must make assumptions about their target audience, such as annual income, interests and hobbies. These assumptions about the target audience can sometimes be detected while decoding a piece of media text.

As my magazine is aimed at women aged from late teens to early twenties, it was not important for me to communicate didactically to my target audience. Images could talk for themselves most of the time, so I didn’t need to anchor them.

On the front cover of my magazine, I used a single image that took up the majority of the page and was linked to my main feature article. I chose this image because it’s a sign that represents the star’s personal style and emotions. As the interview contained a subject that was emotional for the singer, the black and white image was the most appropriate to represent her mood, but still signified her individuality and style through a close-up of her face.

The image I chose to use as the main sign on the interview page was chosen because again it represents the singer’s beauty, but at the same time signifies her confusion and inside emotions associated with the content of the interview. A polaroid effect was added to the photo to compliment the casual and stylish nature of both the magazine and the singer being interviewed. Anchorage was used on this sign by placing her name under her photo. This wasn’t to tell the decoder who it was, it was more of an introduction to the interview, as it is likely to be the first thing the decoder sees and they would recognise the name from the text on the font cover.

Other images included on the double page spread included black and white shots of the singer in a park, displaying poses that signified her thoughtful state of mind. Again, these were edited to include a polaroid effect and included quotes of what the singer had said in the interview. I chose to use the most significant quotes from the interview, to grab the decoder’s attention and deepen their interest in reading the full interview.

On the lower left side of the double page spread I included an image that was not taken during the interview, but one that had been taken at a separate photo shoot. This image is polysemic, as the decoder may see it as a representation of the singer’s confidence, or a representation of confusion and or a sense of sadness or loneliness.

My magazine’s colour scheme was made up of three colours; black, pink and white. I chose these colours as I felt they fit in well with the nature of the magazine – being a pop/retro magazine, black and pink complimented each other and are usually seen as being a modern combination of colours for many media products. White font was used for text on black backgrounds, as it is the easiest colour to read and provided an aesthetic contrast for the decoder. This colour scheme was used in all three sections of my work.
As well as using images from my main cover story on the contents page, I included an image from an article that would also be included in another section of the magazine. The article would have been about the Irish pop singer, Ronan Keating. I included this image in the contents page to give the decoder a visual representation of what kind of signs they would find if they read the article. I took this image myself at a concert and edited on Windows Photo Gallery.