Questionnaire Results & Audience Decisions

I handed out 20 surveys around school and a few round a local park. I didn't just hand them to anyone; this would have given me very false/made up responses. It may have also triggered people to give answers that they THOUGHT was what I wanted and needed (demand characteristics), so I had to avoid people who, stereotypically, didn't look like they read the type of magazine I will be creating.

I aimed and looked for:

• teenagers and young adults (so overall between the ages of 13-21)
• any gender (I kept the gender responses equal; 10 girls, 10 boys)
• wearing a form of style that would typically be associated with rock/alternative (this includes skinny (and sometimes coloured) jeans, hats, the styles makeup, thick rimmed, thin black glasses etc...)

Here are some examples of responses;

From the responses I gathered, I could see and notice a few things that will help my magazine.

Price

These were the results I got for preferred prices. From the results, I can see it's actually quite evenly spread out; however this may just be due to the small sample number I used. It does however suggest flexibility. However, I will stick to what the chart tells me and have decided set the price as £2.59.

Buying Basis

I also gathered results for the timely basis in which people buy music magazines, or if they could at least. This questions had a very strong result that seems obvious to set the magazine to; monthly basis.

This would mean though that the magazine would have to have a lot of content in it and look like a lot of effort has been put into its production.

Questions 5 & 6; Promotions and Fan Material

For these 2 questions, the overall votes showed that people were very interested in gaining information on new bands and/or gig information for bands etc. From the results, I saw that people were pretty interested in the idea and thought it would be a nice way to set out a magazine.

The second question however, asking if people would like to have fan material sent into it, wasn't as popular yet still gained enough votes to show a positive vote. People seemed to like the idea of involving themselves and being able to even submit their own bands.

Colour Scheme

The favourite colour scheme votes were quite interesting, whilst at the same time predicted. Most people went for the first and last options, which is usually used for magazines of this music genre. These bold colours prove to be the most popular and will probably be used.

It's also interesting how similar the popular choices were.  They were only a small hue variation away and one had a little more colour choice to it, that was all the difference there was. So, by this I can see that warm colours with black and white are definetily the way to go.

Cover Choices

The responses I got from the ‘favourite magazine cover’ were overall quite equal. This may have been because all of the magazine covers had very strong designs to them and looked very nice. However, I did notice something from the written side of the responses.

Firstly, the MUTEEN magazine cover gained a lot of attention, mainly due to the girl on the cover. Her name is Taylor Momsen and is highly known for being very ‘sexy’ and lusted over by many boys and girls. She’s always shown in suggestive poses and clothes, it’s just the norm for her ‘character’. However, this proved to have a negative effect on the people I questioned. Whenever they chose this magazine, all they commented on was her and how attractive she was.

They rarely talked about the colour scheme or how the page was laid out, which proved to be a little frustrating. However, it did prove that people do like and are attracted to a large picture of their favourite bands/singers/models/people, meaning it may be best to include a large image rather than clutter the page with article titles.

The second cover image received the most votes and attention, proving to be the strongest design. It was produced by KERRANG and featured a band called Bring Me The Horizon, whom also came up twice in the opinions on favourite bands. They’re known for their attitude, emotive music and strong screamo/post-hardcore style. This is shown clearly on the cover and proved to be a really good one amongst the people I surveyed. People commented on the loud, colourful fonts particularly, along with the layouts ‘fullness’.

There was also a mention of tattoos and how that attracted one particular ‘reader’. Tattoos are often associated with the rock genre, so it may be worth placing at least a reference to some on the cover.

The least popular cover was the third one, Alternative Press, which was strange due to the usual popularity of their covers. I think the problem with the magazine was that, although the colours were extremely bright and bold (which would normally be effective), that the pink and white colours blended a little with the background and was a little uncomfortable to read. The photo was also a little boring to look at, it wasn’t quite ‘epic’ enough for the rock genre.

People did however like the layout of the magazine, it was a little different to norm and made it a little more interesting. It also allowed a lot of room for the mage in the background to stand out. It was however said to look a little empty and not quite full enough to look like a magazine with effort put into it.

Another thing I noticed was that on the questionnaire, the majority of people wrote very short responses to my more 'wordy' questions. Some even wrote just a word or two. This is interesting because it suggests that people get a bit bored if reading for something too long/having to input a lot. So, with this I can see that for my magazine, in an article, I would need to break it up with different colours or paragraphing, or even just write short articles overall and focus a lot more of creating interesting imagery. I don't want to bore my audience.