Detailed Analysis; Q Magazine

Q Magazine;


Audience;
The genre of the Q Magazine is generally Rock, regardless of having a pop star (Cheryl Cole) on the front cover. The Rock genre is still alive via the articles of Rock bands, such as Them Crooked Vultures, Vampire Weekend, Muse, Snow Patrol and Midlake. Because of this, the expected audience would be both sexes, between the ages of 16 and 25. Their psychographics would be expected to be Achievers and/or Traditionalists. Their social values would be Traditionalists, Hedonists and/or Post-Materialists. On the Jicnar scale, the target audience would be between C1 and D.

Title;
The title of the magazine is named Q. This is effective as it is a short, one- sylabbled name, which is therefore easily remembered. This also makes the magazine easy to find, if laid out alphabetically, (whether it's online or in stores), as not many other magazine begin with the letter Q, making it attract the reader and stand out. The font used for the title is a Seriff font, and placed into a large red square in the corner of the magazine. This is effective as the title of the magazine is easy to find, and the white font on the red square makes it stand out, not only on the page, but on the shelves, due to the bright colour on the dark background.

Style&Photographs;

The colour scheme throughout the magazine is simple; Red, White and Black. This is effective because White and Black contrast with each other, whereas Red is a bright colour, which can either connote passion (AKA; for the music) or danger (which can remind the audience that the magazine is not so innocent, regardless of the image of Cheryl Cole, and does contain some harder Rock sides and articles. The backgrounds to each page (except pages that contain a4 sized images) are White with Black writing. This makes it simple to read the contents of the article without getting too distracted by the clash of colours used. The Mastheads to the pages are all Red, with Black writing and the White 'Q' on each page. This attracts the readers to the page as Red is a bright colour and Black is simple to read.

The layout of the front cover is simple. The main sell is made obvious via the large image on the page of Cheryl Cole. This alone will attract the majority of the readers and Cheryl Cole fans, as they will want to read the interview with her. The other stories are written down the left hand side of the magazine cover, which will widen the possible target audience, as fans of Snow Patrol and Muse will more than likely also pick up the magazine to read about them, even if they are not fans of the main sell. The thought of having a popstar on the cover of a Rock magazine sounds unusual, but the pose which Cheryl is doing, and the make up used, makes Cheryl look 'vamped out' and more like a 'Goth' as opposed to a 'Pop singer'. This is because she has dark eye make up on, and bright red lipstick. The photograph also contains rain drops falling, and Cheryl licking a sharp ring. This makes her appear more acceptable on a Rock magazine cover, as she fits in to the expected style of the audience.

There are no other photographs on the front of the magazine, which sounds unusual. However, other stories on the front cover are placed in coloured boxes, will makes them stand out more, as opposed to just plain writing.

This is the contents page for the Q magazine. the layout is interesting and slightly more complicated than other magazines within this genre. It is easy to see which articles are the most 'important' as they have the largest images, and the page numbers are larger also. The 'less important' articles are smaller and down the far left hand, and the far right hand side of the pages, as opposed to together. This makes it slightly harder to find the article you are looking for, especially if you picked it up to read one article only. At a closer look, we see that the left hand sided articles, are 'features' and the right hand sided articles are 'regulars', which makes it slightly easier to find the article you are looking for, once you know this. The contents page is spacious, but appears messy, as at a glance, it looks like random images thrown anywhere. For this reason, I will avoid this when doing my own Contents page for my magazine.

This is an example of a double page spread taken from the Q magazine. The article is about Biffy Clyro and is a review of the band in general. The first thing you notice about the article is the large images taking over a whole side of A4 and the majority of the next page. This will attract the readers, whether they are fans of the band or not. Also, as it is a review, the audience will want to read it and see if their own personal opinions of the band are the same as those who wrote the article. If they are similar, they may pick up the magazine weekly to see which other bands/artists are reviewed. On the last page, down the right hand side of the page, is a list of festivals which the band has performed at. This bigs up the band, and lets the audience see how successful bands such as Biffy Clyro are, in order to asked to perform in such large festivals.