media products and their audiences

This article will explain how different magazines use different ways of appealing to the audiences weither they are female or male targeted it will mostly appeal to the gamer magazine style of gaming and how it uses fonts and codes to appeal to its audiences.

Good examples of differences between female and male magazines are noticed within the games industry such as the fonts and the way of appeals to the audience. http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/30/girl-gamer-magazine-thinks-its-still-the-1950s/. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/gi-0803.jpg

As you can tell from the differences between the male and female magazine the female magazine shows more pastille colours and clearer text to the gamer compared to the male magazine which has a much darker environment and much smaller text to display the image more clearly. With the female magazine it shows a much more variety of colours as the name is in pink to represent girls however the mens magazine has the letters blend in with the colour of the background. Other differences with the magazine covers are that the females poster has a large variety of games displaying with big letters to show games that girl games are more interested in and what they may buy if they own a Nintendo ds.

 The fonts of both of the magazines are varied and it shows as the left one shows more curved letters and a feminine style to the font whilst the male magazine is more hardcore and edged to look more modern and violent to suit the male gamers. The age details also show the way the logo is designed as the logo on the left is mainly aimed at 25 year old women due to the way it is aimed to look as a women is in a mans environment with the blue and the pink mixing together which are considered to be feminine and masculine colours. Also games connected to the age and gender of the audience of that console in order to appeal to that audience. The age for the male gender is aimed at a much younger audience as 16-24 as involves much more violence and less reading to the magazine as more males of that age are more interested in images and games themselves than reading and usually violent games.

This cover shows that it is aimed to target that specific audiences will look at the name since it is big and bold to show at the top whilst the bottom of the cover shows to the gamer type what sort of games they maybe interested in it. It uses bright colours in order to

appeal to the audience and give the viewer a eye catcher.

The detail of the page is simple with a grid system allowing multiple contents to be shown with ease and simple languages. It shows a picture to attract the viewers however it is not as big as the context showing giving the details of what is shown within the magazine before reading the content.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/01/18/pc-gamer-uk-february-issue-shogun-2-fall-of-the-samurai/

As a team we decided to get opinions of how they would look at this magazine cover from pc gamer using multiple targets. Dave thoguht he was more interested in the text than he was with the image whilst Cai was more attracted to the image and feeling as if looking at the image lets you geta  idea of what the magazine is about. my personal opinion says that this magazine cover is aimed at 16-24 whilst Cai believes that it is alot widely spread from 15- 30 year olds. The detail of the font is very short and simple however it just gets to the point of the name of the magazine. It uses red for pc and world exclusive to show a stop and look or warning to get your attention whilst in china red symbolizes money and good luck.

 The magazine cover itself draws in people due to the large image compared to the text given to it. If anyone owns the game however they will not be as interested in the game as they would just look at it and feel like they have seen it before whilst those who have not seen it would be interested in looking at it and may convince them to know more information about the game itself. Blood is splattered across world exclusive to show that the game itself this week or month is reviewing a violent game if you did not notice the gun and the name of the game before looking. The letters are shiny showing the top 100 best games to give you a idea that if you are interested in knowing good games that you will want to look into the magazine more. This is done so they can display their audience more clearly of who would be interested into reading the magazine and which specific audience is not interested in reading the magazine.



Other points to notice is if the magazine cover has bilingual or just a single language on it to appeal to both audiences if lets say it had welsh at the front of the cover as well as english showing that it is attempting to focus on multiple audiences ratehr than just one. http://www.jingdaily.com/kaizhi/jing/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cover-FINAL.jpg

Doing this helps get more targets to aim at when trying to sell a magazine as there are multiple languages on the magazine to show an appeal to both languages.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/gi-0803.jpg

This is the magazine cover I have chosen in order to explain how game magazines appeal to their audience. The magazine displays a dark enviroment for a horror / action way of gaming to those who see it from the picture itself to look more terrifying ratehr than calm or peaceful. This magazine would be mostly aimed at a male gender rather than female due to it looking very dark compared to the calm and inviting look most female magazines have such as the example below. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSUBMl5H1ZBsRfkT0XJCBy9K3Zokg_Nlnhvf79zUr-VKCG-mx_CM73sADhyphenhyphen6tWrqwPiUJAcgDKM__tPafvnDMirmNsW993peyECufHsM_gtXj5Sn9sqYSvBcv1zKEOi7JqRnc1q3nTL0/s320/Female+Aug07+crop+400.JPG

As the detail shows on the magazine it is more bright and calm comapred to the dark horror look the magazine gives from the game magazine. It also gives a clearer view of what detail will be explained within the magazine whilst the magazine I am analysing which shows little detail of hwta is inside the magazine but mostly detailing to the game that is currently on the release and on the front cover of the magazine. The magazine I am analysing does however show other games in circles or consoles that are having new reports but it does not show much about the game other than the name of the game.

The magazine however does show a detail of a grid where the title is at the top in big and bold and any details of what is inside the magazine would be in smaller detail however with the game magazine it shows the names of games in bigger writing and comments about their magazine and consoles in smaller writing. This is different to the female magazine which has organised it into sub headings and made the writing clear and readable making this easier for the audience to know what it is inside the magazine before buying it or opening the magazine. The questionaire I have distributed shows that most people who liked the magazine were of the male gender rather than the female however more males were wiling to take their time for answering the questionaire. another answer I found out during my questionaire is most people who liked the cover liked it due to the film of alien so they were already familurised with it. This shows that they may know the game from a film and therefore be interested in the magazine cover because of that or they may dislike it as they may not like the movie.

Evaluation

In my findings I have found out that there are multiple ways of appealing to the readers of the magazines and they all use a specific way of a grid system when designing the magazine. This has also shown me how the gender effects the magazine cover and weither having a male or female audience can differ and change it for designing a unisex magazine cover. I have also seen how the fonts change in different magazines and how they use the image within the magazine cover and how it varies between different companies and if they use bilingual or not.

Conclusion

If i were to create this article again  would find more people willing to answer my questionaire in order to get a clearer idea of their opinions of how the magazine is aimed at. I would also find more examples of different magazines to show much clearer detail as to why the magazines are designed in such a way with fonts and codes to make it easier for the viewer to understand what they are showing within the magazine to the specific audience which could include linguistic or symbolic to that audience.