AS Reseach and Planning: Q Magazine Cover Analysis

Q Magazine

Q magazine is a music magazine and covers every genre of music. It is therefore versatile and appeals to any music fan. The masthead has a large font and is situated in the left hand corner of the front cover. Interestingly, the masthead is red. Psychologically, red is an extremely strong colour. It conjures up a range of conflicting emotions like passion to violence and warfare. It also has connotations with traffic lights- red for stop (and read me!).

The strap line to is also red, which nicely contrasts with the white background of the main image. The text adding weight to the strap line is a gold colour, and uses signifiers such as 'unseen', 'last' and 'whole'. These words signify exclusiveness, up to date (as far as possible) and everything involved on the cover. All of these things appeal to the audience, especially those who are fans of the musical icon. There is more text in a smaller font below this, which is in white as it overlaps the image of the person. Again, the contrast against the black of the image to the white allows the reader to read it clearly. Below this, it also has a small part of three other variations of this issue's cover.

The main image used is of musical legend John Lennon, as the magazine is celebrating his 70th birthday. The image is in black and white, the effect of this adding weight to the fact he is dead, and the image is from the 60s or 70s and the tragedy of his early death. It is a close up to mid-shot and he is looking straight into the camera, so that he is staring at the reader. The effect of this is that the reader feels that the image is personal to them as it is addressing them directly. The background is white, which is subtle, yet effective.

To the right of the cover on the sides are content features inside the magazine. The headings of these features are red, like the masthead and strap line. Signifiers like exclusive! signify that readers will be getting inside gossip about the issue, which will urge them to buy it. There is also a 'stamp' of red with the number of pages of reviews inside, appealing to people looking for music reviews. The border is gold, with text at the top enforcing the main focus on the magazine, John Lennon. The font of 70th has a classical edge to it, adding weight to the significance of the issue being a collector’s edition to musical fans.