KEY TERMS: represent, connote, infers, implies, suggests etc, technical design conventions, demographics, psychographics, audience segmentation, target audience.
Task Instructions
The Case Studies
Make a copy and file it in your Media Studies folder in your drive.
Individually take a copy of the slideshow and keep the magazine cover you are going to research for target audience data and how that might impact on the design features.
The analysis should include the following:
1. The mission statement of the publication:
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- Look on their website for a tagline, catchphrase that encapsulates their mission – what they hope to provide to their readers.
- Here is the mission statement for the Kerrang brand. I found this by Googling ‘Kerrang Mission Statement’…easy peasy.
2. A description of their likely target audience.
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- You should refer to the attached audience segmentation document to help identify a suitable classification for the target audience.
- Your teacher will help you with this. Typically, they might suggest looking at the ads covered by the magazine
- This doesn’t work online, because Google’s algorithm knows who is looking at a page and puts up ads specific to them…
3. Demographics and Psychographics of the audience:
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- One way to do this, is to think of a likely reader of the magazine, that you know and then model the ideas on them.
4. Other information about your target audience:
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- If you have thought of a likely reader that you know, then add more detail in about their likes and dislikes, their jobs, their hobbies, their favourite food, music, media.
- This is important audience research for a magazine creator to know so they know what to include in their magazine in terms of articles, information, entertainment and advertising, which will satisfy their audiences’ uses and gratifications…remember…?
5. Textual analysis
Now that you have an idea of who the target audience is, try and unpick, decode, deconstruct the front cover.
- why have they used certain fonts, colours, images, language?
- Why would this appeal to the target audience?
- Consider how those design elements are shaped to communicate meaning, which will reflect the brand and mission statement
- look for the signs, symbols, colours, fonts, framing, MES, facial expression, body language, language, masthead and cover lines (language) etc that have been used to convey a narrative, to represent a genre, to sell a brand.
Advice:
Use the correct terms for the technical conventions when talking about the design elements attached to them i.:
- ‘The masthead design represents the magazine as…’
- ‘The plug language connotes…’
- ‘The cover lines font infers…’
What a good one looks like:
Here is an example from a previous student that includes some very detailed observations:
This is the format we would like you to follow and use the sub-headings included.
Some of the sections can be bullet pointed or lists, but others will require some analysis to include the terms: represents, implies, suggests, signifies etc when doing a textual analysis.