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.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When considering what media institution might distribute my product and why, it is important to understand the genre and target audience of my product. My magazine is of a very niche and by majority unheard of genre (Synthwave/Retrowave). This means that any listener base would be notably small and specific, ruling out the magazine as a particularly wise investment in terms of moneymaking for a large publishing company such as Bauer Media, Dennis Publishing or Times Inc. Media (IPC Media).

While the genre does have potential to continue advancing in popularity, EXOSKELETON is still better suited to a small, independent publisher.

The Synthwave genre has never had it's own dedicated magazine before, making this magazine highly experimental and a risk to actually invest in and publish. This further deems it unsuitable for large-scale publishing by a popular publisher like those mentioned above.

When looking at other, similar small-time music magazines of similar genres such as Synth and Dubstep (which are both far more popular than synthwave), the Dubstep / Drum & Bass magazine 'Kmag' is published by a small independent company called 'Phoenix Publishing' and the experimental UK music magazine 'The Wire' actually has it's own independent publishing company, making it a self-publishing conglomerate that is vertically integrated. This suggests that the magazine had trouble finding publishing when it was founded in the 80s, likely due to the lack of independent publishers.

Therefore, given this research it is safe to say that it is highly unlikely that a large-scale publishing company would take on EXOSKELETON Magazine due to it's small if not negligible profits and fairly high chance of failing commercially. In fact, a small, independent publishing company such as Phoenix Publishing should publish my magazine, and in fact, given the genre's steady climb in popularity, if the magazine turned out to be a success, it could possibly be a wise choice for the magazine to vertically integrate and self-publish.

Evaluation Question 2

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product is intended to represent multiple social groups, but the most prominent social group associated with the 'synthwave' genre are male teenagers and young adults, namely 'hipsters' and gamers who are the largest and most active and internet-savvy listener base for this genre from my personal experience. This makes them the primary social group. The secondary social group that this magazine is intended to represent is the generation of people born during the 70s and 80s who experienced their youth during the 80s and early 90s. This generation is likely to now be in their 30s and 40s,

making it difficult to represent both while not deterring either. In order to represent the middle aged, male I featured an adult with grey hair and classic aviator sunglasses on the front cover and in the contents page. Also, the opportunity to win the Nintendo Entertainment System was an element used to appeal to and represent both social groups as the Primary social group contains a lot of collectors and enthusiasts of these old consoles, and the Secondary social group may have at some point owned one as a kid or teenager, appealing to their nostalgia factor. the magazine's appeal to the older Secondary generation is in nostalgia value which is how a link can be made with the current modern retro enthusiast generation (the Primary social group)

The magazine does conform to some stereotypes associated with the genre, mostly around the area of costume choice and other elements of the magazine like the use of red connotating both anger and lust, imagery like the star lit mountain with the neon writing on it much like the Hollywood sign - further linking the genre with Hollywood and action movies, and fonts notably the military vehicle font used on the "TOP 15" list top left of the magazine cover which is associated with war and action movies.

Furthermore, the model on the front cover is wearing a black leather jacket, has facial hair, and aviator sunglasses with a lightning bolt superimposed onto them. These represent the potential audience and the social groups associated with the genre as stereotypical hot-blooded males like the Hollywood action movie heroes and anti-heroes of the 80s, namely Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies.

Finally, in the other two pages, I have represented artists 'Lazerhawk' and 'Mitch Murder' with students of a similar age groups to what their real life counter parts actually are which appeals to the primary audience more and represents them accurately.


In terms of economic status, this magazine represents no particular socio-economic groups. The representation of target audience of my magazine and the genre is neither particularly rich nor poor. While the representation may fall into the working/middle class area as a result of this, the target audience is assumed to be relatively economically stable and not in poverty; equally, they are not assumed to be particularly wealthy.


Summary: Summarized, my target social groups are intended to be primarily middle class, teenage and young adult males who enjoy video games, action movies, and / or the 1980/1990s, as well as secondarily being middle class, middle aged adult males who also enjoy any of the above, but who also have a strong sense of nostalgia for that time period

Finished DPS

(Bottom version is without the superficial page splitter line in the center)

Evaluation Question 1

http://goanimate.com/videos/04uwPZbXtrAU?utm_source=linkshare&utm_medium=linkshare&utm_campaign=usercontent

(The GoAnimate presentation answers the question for the Front Cover)

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Shown together, it is easy to see that all of these pages of my magazine share a consistent house style and colour base (namely the computer grid and space/aerial theme. While the contents page differs slightly, portraying a sunset behind the palm trees, a planet or moon is still visible behind them. Both of the other pages feature a star field and all three feature a grid/mesh like those of early vector graphics.

My three colour scheme is Black, Red, and Purple still between all three of these except for the contents page which takes on a more tropical sunset feel with it's use of orange, using four main colours in total. The text and page numbers follow a consistent font, size, colour and black skewed background

The contents page uses the same masthead font as the front cover.

The artist 'Lazerhawk' is mentioned throughout my product and is the focus of the Double Page Spread. This also provides continuity to the magazine.

Finally, my layout matches the conventions of other magazines through the contents page and double page spread which are used in almost all magazines of the same type. The contents page features images and mentions the articles relating to them with subheadings as well as having a main contents of each artist mentioned. However, the overall layout of the contents page is unusual and the artists are arranged alphabetically rather than by page number. This is not a common convention for contents pages and my magazine has challenged it by deviating from it.

 My double page spread follows most conventions surrounding the standard DPS. It has images of the artist which it is about on one page and all of the text on the other. A clear example of this convention can be seen here: http://heathenmedia.co.uk/cward/files/2013/11/dps3.jpg

Front Cover w/ Date Fix

Double Page Spread WIP 1