Audience Expectations

Audience expectations are what the audience expects to see when they look at a magazine and these expectations are different for each specific magazine.

Pop magazines, for example, are completely different from Indie and R&B magazines. Here the audience expects bright vibrant colours, clean cut text and high key lighting to make the artist or model stand out and come alive.

In this magazine we can see that there are very vibrant colours, such as bright pinks and purples and some yellow which are all feminine colours, so this suggests that this magazines target audience is mainly females and pop is associated with having a mainly female target audience about 16- 25, hence they use popular female colours. Furthermore, as you can see Cheryl Cole who is the artist that is being used on the front cover has been photo-shopped to stand out more and as I have mentioned earlier this is due to the high key lighting that is being used. There are also many cover lines and page furniture used to attract the readers attention and make it stand out.






In 'Kerrang' an indie/ alternative rock magazine, the audience expectation would be for bold text, dark clothing on models and colours that stand out such as red, yellow and black, the magazine is expected to be loud, give off a bit of attitude and stress their individuality. You can tell that the artists that have been chosen to model have an interesting personality due to their facial expressions.

The design of the masthead 'Kerrang' sets a tone which makes the audience feel on edge and this will result in the target audience being drawn in by this magazine further. Rock magazines tend to have a negative connotation that shows aggression. However, they tend to contrast completely with what people associate to be good and set bad a role model for the younger generations, therefore their target audience ranges to a much higher age, usually about mid 30's.