Questionnaire planning

James McClements6949

My magazineMy main production work will take the form of an Indie/Alternative music magazine. It will be comparable to the leading institutions in this genre: ‘NME’ and ‘DIY’. NME, representing what is now a ‘mass-media’ magazine; being available for free at public places, used to be the leader in alternative music publication in the UK for over 20 years. DIY is now the leading Indie music magazine, and still caters for the niche market. I will feature instances of ‘repetition’ (Neale) in the design of my magazine with DIY, and enough ‘differences’ to avoid plagiarising, and being unique enough to attract an audience.

Target AudienceMy target audience will be, as mentioned before, stereotypical ‘Indie kids’, or counter-culture ‘hipsters’. I will cover both ‘genders’ (Hartley) and an age range from ‘16-24’. The majority of my audience will be ‘middle class’ creatives who conform to socioeconomic class ‘B’, otherwise for the younger readers who are students, their class is ‘E’. Ethnicity is not an important feature for my magazine, however stereotypically Indie music appeals to ‘white’ people. Lastly, my magazine will appeal to people from the ‘UK’ rather than an international audience.

Questionnaire formMy questionnaire will take form of a written page where contributors will tick boxes to answer questions. It will be distributed to a focus group collective of my target audience. 16-24 year olds who enjoy indie music. I decided against using an electronic survey from a site like ‘Survey Monkey’ as the results often are represented inaccurately, and I will produce far more useful and concise results If I produce evaluative graphs myself.

I am confident in expecting accurate results thanks to my specific sample, and reliance on the knowledge of my target audience, who being the potential buyers of the publication, should know what to look for in a magazine.

Questionnaire

Questionnaire designMy first question discovers what the most significant convention is to my target audience. This is usual to discovering what ‘jumps out’ to my target audience, either ‘star appeal’ (Dyer), the design or layout of the front cover, or the actual content – i.e. main headline.My second question identifies what kind of image representation matches the genre of magazine, and appeals to the audience. Either a mid or long shot of my feature, or an image taken in a studio, or a location shoot.The third identifies what kind of masthead could attract an audience. As most magazines in the genre, (‘Q’ ‘NME’ and ‘DIY’) are fairly short, I am discovering if that is essential to the genre, and audience appeal. Question 4 simply tries to identify what artist/band will be most popular to interview for the first issue in my target audience.The fifth question is used to discover what codes and conventions in my magazine to prioritise, particularly in my contents page in terms of font size, or even for my front cover.The sixth highlights what the audience will be attracted to visually, and identifies the influence from competing magazines (‘NME’, ‘Q’), as they both features reds in their design – a colour synonymous to the genre. I need this to discover the importance of colour, and whether because of a magazine like ‘DIY’ that does not use red, could still be attractive to my target audience if I don’t use synonymous colours.Question seven displays the importance of the contents page in my target audience.Eight seeks to discover the importance of puff promotion in my magazine.Nine discovers the importance of double-page spreads.And lastly ten seeks to find out how much my target audience would pay for a magazine. (I included free as an option because both ‘DIY’ and ‘NME’ are free magazines). It will be interesting to see the results for this question, as if my target audience are used to not paying for music magazines, then it might be essential to also release a free magazine to compete with others.

Questionnaire results

• After distributing 10 questionnaires out to members of my intended target audience, results were collated and graphed.

1) What is the most important feature in a magazine front cover?

A catchy main headline/coverline (1)Inciting puff promotion (0)An exciting main image with ‘Star appeal’ (7)A good colour scheme (2)

2) What would you prefer to see in a main image?

A mid shot of an artist or band (6)A full body shot of an artist or band (4)

A photo-shoot style quality image with props (7)An image shot in a natural back-ground with a clear location (3)

3) What is most important about a magazine’s masthead?

A short name/ ab-breviation (e.g. ‘NME’ or ‘DIY’) (4)A reference to a song or art piece (e.g. ‘505’ – Arctic Monkeys) (3)It’s relation to a genre (e.g. ‘Alternative’) (3)

4) Who would you like to see interviewed?

The Libertines (0)Tame Impala (4)Django Django (1)Mac Demarco (5)Wolf Alice (0)

5) What feature would be most important to you?

Gig and Concert reviews (3)New Album reviews (2)New bands (1)Artist interviews (4)

6) What colour scheme best suits a music magazine?

Reds and whites (5)Blacks and whites (3)Yellows and oranges (2)Blues and greens (0)

7) What category suits you most below?

I always look at the con-tents page and view features before reading (7)I browse through the magazine and ignore contents pages (3)

8) What category suits you most below?

I always look at promo-tions and freebies in magazinesI do a quick browser search after seeing album promotionsI ignore promotional items in magazines

9) Do you always look at the main feature (double-paged interview)?

Yes (9)No (1)

10) How much would you pay for a monthly Indie music magazine?

Nothing (free) (7)99p (0)1.99 (2)2.39 (1)4.39 (0)

[unfinished] –need to rewrite

• Using this information I have decided that my target audience are looking to pay nothing, as two examples of my magazine’s direct competition offer free publications on a weekly or monthly basis: NME, and DIY.

• In this case, I will seek to provide other forms of income through my magazine like paid product placements, sponsorships/ exclusivities like where my magazine can be purchased from, (similar to DIY’s exclusivity to record stores and Doc Martens shops)