Focus group

For my focus group i chose a few people who fit my target audience of 15 - 21 year old girls who are into indie/ pop music and who would enjoy reading this magazine. I showed them a sample of my first draft cover, contents page and two page spread and asked them what they like and did not like about it. I also asked about strengths and weaknesses and also what i could do to improve each page. Here are the questions i asked:

• Strengths?
• Weaknesses?
• How could i improve?
• What would you rate it out of 10?

Person number 1 – (Front page) A strength of this front cover is that the colours stand out on the cover lines against the dark background. It also has lots of cover lines which makes it good as it is more cluttered and noticeable. A weakness of this front cover is that the fonts are not nice and do not appeal to the genre and also the target audience. To improve i could change the cover lines to make them smaller and also change the fonts to be able to make them more appealing to the target audience. This was rated at 6.
(Contents page) Strength of this contents page is that it looks appealing as the layout relates to the genre. Also, it stands out and so it can appeal to the target audience. A weakness of this is that it looks childish as the colours are immature and so it does not relate to the genre. To improve they suggested changing the colour scheme to make it more relevant to the genre of indie/ pop and make it less childish. Also, different fonts do that the focus is not on the fonts but the images and colours. They rated this 7.
(Two page spread) Strength of this two page spread is the layout as it is very formal and relevant to the genre. A weakness of this two page spread is that it stands out too much and so draws too much attention to it and therefore cannot see the text as much. To improve you should make the background a simple white to therefore draw less attention. The focus group rated this out of 7.