Evaluation Question 4

Question 4: Who would be the right audience for your media product?

I mentioned my reader audience in Question 4 and explained how I believe that my magazine will likely appeal to a 'Primary' and 'Secondary' audience. Teenagers and young adults (primary), and some middle aged adults(secondary).
This is because the 80s theme may appeal to people who were young during that era, but would also appeal to the fans of the genre around my age, who are by majority also the prosumers of this genre of music too.

I have established this dual age range from research previously carried out into the genre and people's opinions of it (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VHPSP8T) as well as any existing products based around the genre. The most significant thing that I found relating to synthwave and it's pseudo-80s feel was the hugely successful indie video game 'Hotline Miami' and it's sequel.

I put my existing knowledge of the game's popularity and it's male oriented but age varied player base and created my product to appeal to the same group (Males roughly between the ages of 10-40) and split that age group into my Primary and Secondary audience groups (Primary being 10-30 and Secondary being 30-40)

This large age range is one of the reasons that I chose this music genre to cover in my magazine. Even if the genre appeals much more to the primary, younger generation and I have reflected this in the magazine. The younger generation is especially appealed to in my front cover:

As can be seen here, the lightning bolt on the sunglasses, the NES up for grabs, and the overall neo-futuristic aesthetic of the front cover is heavily influenced by video games and Sci-Fi. These are two things that the younger teen and 20s generation who would be able to relate to. The artists mentioned on the left are both modern synthwave artists and album covers, distancing the magazine from people of the actual 80s generation. The only things which may be relatable by the older generation / secondary audience is the dress code of my cover model (Ben) and the vintage Console up for wins. Everything about the cover is exclusively catered to the primary audience.

On the contrary, the Double Page Spread is designed to have more appeal to the Secondary audience:

The overall layout of this image is less intense and deliberately overly-cluttered with nonsense and unnecessary elements like the second LazerHawk logo, Registration Plate Style font on the masthead (top left), the unnecessary filters on the artist, wacky and New Wave styled text container along with the unnecessary use of angling on almost every element of the DPS all exist to create a more authentic and cheesy 1980s aesthetic rather than the pseudo-80s Hotline Miami (video game) influenced futuristic feel of the genre. The random box saying '80's' in neon red quartz font is jsut there to emphasize the decade of which the genre and magazine are based even more, so that someone who has never heard of the genre nor the magazine can pick this up, take one glance at the page, and instantly be able to summarize what they are both about (the 80's).

After researching people's opinions on the genre of varied age and gender groups, I found that there was still a fairly large  female player base of the video game and one female which I sent the survey monkey to enjoyed the music genre and said that they would recommend the magazine. This means that the genre and magazine should NOT by exclusively for men and should in fact appeal to both genders, despite still catering more towards a male audience than a female one.

As the things associated with the genre include sci-fi, hollywood action movies, and male oriented things, I followed the visual base and Sci-Fi theme seen in the video for 'Accelerated' by Miami Nights 1984 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDBbaGCCIhk). As Science-Fiction is among the least gender-specific elements of the genre as opposed to women in swimsuits and other things associated with male-oriented sex appeal, I chose to theme the magazine around this as to keep it from being entirely gender-specific in it's appeal.