I took my (almost completed) front cover to school to ask my friends (boys and girls aged 16-18) what they thought of it - treating them like a focus group, as they are in the age demographic I am aiming at. It was unanimous that they all liked my design, however they came up with good pointers to make it even better. One of my friends said "I like the colours and the main image is very eye-catching, but the barcode needs to be moved as it looks too squished in the corner and the smaller images look out of place". I completely understood her critique and took on board what she had to say. So when I got home I changed the details she suggested.
Another of my friends suggested that I should include a tagline of the magazine (which I had planned but omitted in the creation stage), like Q's magazine's tagline is “Britain’s Biggest Music Magazine”. I discussed with them what they thought would be a good tagline for the style of magazine I had presented them with. We decided together that the tagline should read "Bringing the music to you".
I checked with them that they would pay the price for the magazine and that they would be attracted to buy it from the cover. They all said they would so I think I have created a successful magazine cover.
After this extra research, I have completed what my time plan has stated and even undertaken extra market research.
