Magazine Focus Group

As part of my research to discover the best way to design a political document aimed towards young people, I held a focus group with five people in the class to compare a political magazine with a popular magazine aimed at young people.

I showed them the cover and examples of articles from Company Magazine and Total Politics Magazine along with a list of talking points, those were:

• Target audience
• Layout
• Texts/fonts
• Images
• Image/text balance
• Colours
• Tone
• Is it appealing
• What would you change
• Best features
• Which do you prefer

I also asked whether the group thought the modern, fun design of Company magazine would work as a design for a political document aimed at teenagers.

Overall, the group preferred Company magazine as they liked it's modern layout that was clear aimed at young people. They liked the colours and images used and the fact that they weren't too bold and over the top kept the tone of the magazine mature. One of the main points of Company magazine that stood out was their '#readitandtweet' feature. The group thought that a feature like this would be a point of interest in a political document aimed towards young people as almost all teenagers spend most of their time on social media and it would be a fun way to keep up to date with politics.

Total Politics magazine was very unpopular with the group because of the general tone and layout. It was described as looking like a newspaper that was far too text heavy and the small, boring images didn't break the text or add a point of interest to the articles. Total Politics magazine is an example of the typically boring information that is accessible if you want to find out more about politics, it doesn't appear to a young audience and the group feel as though continuing to produce magazines like this won't help engage young people in politics.