The colour scheme used for Q magazine’s front cover mainly consists of the colours white and red. It is a simple yet effective creating a clean professional look. The colours are stereotypically associated with rock and punk genres but the lack of black suggests that the magazine is less “rebellious” this is true because Q magazine is pitched to a wider audience and covers many other different genres of music. The photograph on the front cover has been taken in a studio and isn’t very natural, the person in the photograph is posed with his mouth wide open, but has been modified with a smaller picture of an explosion and the band performing inside his mouth. This says something about the band pictured as explosions are very “anti-establishment” and more associated with rock or punk genres.
As this is the front cover, there is nowhere enough writing as there would be on a double page spread; however the front cover does the job of attracting the reader, so the writing style here is bigger, in a simpler font and is just made up of short headings. The simple font makes the magazine look professional and makes it appeal to everybody, this ties in with Q’s reputation as a music magazine that covers pretty much all of the mainstream genres.
The use of the words, “Free, Exclusive and Unheard” are used to advertise that some of the extra content that the magazine contains. “Free” implies that the reader will be getting something beneficial from the magazine without any extra cost, “Exclusive and Unheard” tells the reader that the content they will be getting will not be available anywhere else at the current time.
The overall look of the cover is very clean, with simple text and colours giving the magazine a “professional” look, the basic design of the front cover has been used so that the magazine can appeal to a wider audience, by keeping the design to the basics of what is happening in the magazine on a plain background it doesn’t discriminate readers on what type of genres of music they listen to.
The cover is made up of one large picture with writing over the top of it, therefore there is only one picture but it takes up the majority of the page, with the text over the top of it. With the text being over the top of the picture you could make the assumption that the magazine is ranking the text as more important as the pictures, which could suggest a slightly older target audience.
There are two photos on this contents page both of them have been taken on an outside location and are posed. This again goes away from the stereotypical rock type photos which are often taken from live performances by the band or singer. The outside photos might suggest that the interview or features have a very natural or relaxed feel to them as they take place away from the music industry.
Since this is a contents page, there are no articles, instead it contains headings and a couple of lines of text about what each page of the magazine contains, the headings use the same headings as the title, however the text underneath the headings is in a font called “Times New Roman” it makes the page feel a little more formal which again hints towards a slightly older target audience.
The overall look of the page is a lot more cluttered than the front cover but contains a lot more information about what the magazine contains, however the idea of Q being a magazine with a professional, clean and tidy look is continued here due to the text being in columns or rectangular boxes, there are no jagged edges to promote instability or rebellion found in more punk or rocky based magazines. Since there is no real substance to the text, as the page is only a guide to what the magazine contains, the pictures dominate the page.
The colour scheme for the double page spread is white, however in the centre of the second page in the spread there is an extract from the article enlarged and put in red font, this signifies it’s importance in context to the article, the very formal font and the layout of text, in columns like a newspaper suggest an older target audience.
This is also supported by the length of the article, the article takes up a whole page and is in a very small font, and stereotypically longer articles with more information would not appeal as much to younger audiences who perhaps are not as interested in some of the finer details of the music industry. The photographs on the first page are a mixture of live performances and studio close-ups of the band members, the studio shots outnumber the live performances. The studio pictures carries on the theme from the cover and contents page however the liver performances suggest that the band the article is on are perhaps part of a more rocky or punk genre. It adds a bit of personality to the spread which says more about the band.
There is quite a lot of text in the article compared to some other music magazines which once again hints at a slightly older audience who would stereotypically be more interested in the interview, compared to younger readers who may just want to see photos of their favourite bands.
Q magazine is published by the Bauer Media Group who also publishes Kerrang! music magazine, they also have radio stations for both Q and Kerrang! as well as TV channels for both. They also own other magazines on a variety of topics as well as multiple radio stations. I will also be looking over and analysing some more magazines in order to help my market research
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