Focus Group Responses - Magazine Cover

As I had done with my poster, I showed my focus group my magazine cover to collect their feedback.

Female, student, age 15 – ‘Looks like something I’d seen on the magazine rack in a shop. The image works well and your fonts really work well.’

Female, student, age 18 – ‘You’ve followed the conventions of film magazines and created something that looks good and professional. Everything I’d expect to find on a magazine is there.’

Female, media student, age 22 – ‘The manipulation of the image is what really makes the cover work. Screams horror and I’d pick it up if I saw it. One criticism I do have is that there’s a lot of space that you could have done without, such as around the lapels of his jacket, could have maybe done with having the image slightly lower?’

Female, journalist, age 25 – ‘Really like your fonts, and the colours work together nicely, but I think the image could have been stretched over the page a bit more, there’s a bit much blank space around the mask.’

Male, advertising student, age 21 – ‘Everything aligns really well, which is what I think makes it look so professional. You’re clearly a perfectionist! Well done.’

Male, student, age 19 – ‘I don’t know if I like the colours of the image… Looks a little overdone to me. But on the whole your image is good and you’ve worked hard on getting the fonts right.’

Following these comments, I did fiddle with the image on my magazine cover in an attempt to have the mask slightly more obvious with less space around the lapels of the jacket; however the proportions were not quite right to do this and so it would not work sufficiently. One alteration I did decide on was using some more text on my front cover to make the page slightly busier as there was considerably too much blank space where a lot more could have been going on.