“A 'target market or target Audience is the market segment which a particular product is marketed to. It is often defined by age, gender and/or socio-economic grouping.”
Wikipedia
Keeping in mind
Market research, as tedious as it seems, has got its purposes. All of my previous research had led to a vivid impression of what my target market is, wants and has. According to this research my preferred audience is mostly compiled of mainstreamers & aspirers. Their tastes are common for their age of 14-20; going out with friends, shopping both in-store and online & ‘trendy’ fashion to name a few. At this point they have foundations of taste but haven’t fully developed yet – creating this aspiration of being an individual.
Probably the greatest inspiration for my magazine is ASOS. This fashion site has already a huge audience base for my target market and provided many examples of different styles (as seen in their on-site advertising); perfect for what I need. My audience has a thirst for fashion inspiration, music guidance but without the strong opinions on certain genres – all I need to do is create a balanced design without any true styles with a collection of great photographs, easy!
Photo-shoot
When looking at ASOS’ branding along with a few magazines I had quickly picked up on a few key factors in what made their images so ‘unique’ in which I followed:
- · Basic, basic, basic - Usually medium-long distance from the model. Over 2/3rds of all photographs had only 1 model standing or sitting down.
- · Rule of thirds – The model typically is within the first 1/3rd or second 1/3rd, it was rare to find images which were centred or where the model was cut off. However for cover images, this does not apply!
- · Outside-Inside - Plain, almost neutral background. Usually a mildly derelict room which could be mistaken for being outside or inside. The floor is seen within the photos.
- · AWKWARD. – Each pose taken looked uncomfortable, however natural. As best as I can describe it, it looks like they got the model to move whilst taking the photo, producing a mid-shot.
When I had taken my photographs I kept a basic neutral colour setting so that the images looked as natural as possible, ironically ready to be edited on Photoshop and be given cool-coloured tints. The angles I used were simple as an over complexion of emotion would be counterproductive. I needed to keep the focus on the poses and the clothes so I had directed my models to be ‘as expressionless as possible, maybe even a little confused’ whilst shooting from a subtly low angle. The lighting for the models was typical overhead, anything else and it wouldn’t be appropriate.
I <3 Art.
With great taste comes great responsibility, so any form of art is a typical interest of my audience. They like a bit of eye candy! So from start to finish I had this in mind. When drafting out my layouts I had intentions on creating a collage-like layout based upon notepaper & Polaroid photographs whilst maintaining a neutral and elegant effect. I used photographs I took of paper and other random items to create the majority of the layout along with some Photoshop trickery to produce the Polaroids from scratch.
Products come first
As my DPS was about fashion and selling specific items and looks, I had to sell the products to the best of my ability. During my drafting stage I used images off the internet to get a rough idea of what I wanted it to look like. Then when I shot the individual images of the products I had placed them upon a white sheet with enough lighting to form a home-made suntan booth.
After that, it was a (greatly fun) case of mashing it all up together on the computer!
