2. As we can see from these four example front covers, Q magazine have a very regular structure to their magazine, that being their trademark ‘Q’ magazine logo in the top left hand corner, this is similar to NME and they both do it for the same reasons – it’s generally the first thing the reader sees and also, when on the shelves all people will see is the top of the magazine, and in this case that would be the ‘Q’ so therefore people would easily be able to find it on the shelves. We do however see on the Muse edition see that Q magazine are willing to do something different, showing Matthew Bellamy, the lead singer of Muse smashing the Q logo . The colour scheme here is Red, White & Black, this is a common colour scheme, however it is a good clear one that works and looks good.

3. They ‘big themselves up’ here by stating that they are ‘The UK’S Biggest Music Magazine’. However in this edition Lady Gaga’s hair covers the music part so it just states ‘The UK’S Biggest Magazine’. Q MusicMagazine Analysis Front Cover: The trademark logo. ‘The 100 most shocking moments in music’ is one of the titles. This is done using all different fonts, colours, sizes etc which grabs the reader’s attention well. The magazine also has a piece under the Lady Gaga title saying, ‘PLUS’ not only is this in capital letters, it’s also in red writing, drawing lots of attention to it. This is aimed at the people that may not really be into Lady Gaga and may buy the magazine for another artist. The circle is a different shape to everything else on the cover of the magazine, therefore attracts attention. In this case it’s promoting another band, this is a good idea I feel I may use for my magazine. The title is big and the font style looks classy, it reads ‘Lady Gaga’, this relates to the only picture on the front cover, being the only picture it really stands out and all eyes are on her. This particular front cover could link to do with ‘the male gaze’ as Lady Gaga is topless here and she could be seen as ‘eye candy’. The barcode is placed in the bottom right hand corner to get it out of the way and so not many people see it. I like this idea and more than likely will use it in my magazine.

4. They interestingly have the date, and also the edition number of this particular magazine. I don’t think I’ll be using this in my magazine. Contents Page: This contents page is much more simplistic to others i’ve looked at. It keeps the traditional theme of having things in numerical order going down the page. However, it does have a ‘Oasis Special’ part to it, that is totally dedicated to Oasis. As we can see there’s one main picture, that takes up the majority of the page, and definitely the 2nd and 3rd 3rds of the page. This is off the cover star and who their double page spread will be based on [unfortunately I couldn’t find the contents page for the Lady Gaga edition]. They also have an ‘every month’ section. This is highlighted with the red background and the bold white writing. They also have a ‘Q review’ section. There’s links from this to various pages throughout the magazine.

5. A criticism of this double page spread I would have is that I feel it looks a bit bland, minus the big L it is nearly virtually bare with just writing. However, with the target audience that Q aim at this is more acceptable as they won’t just want pictures, they’ll want to know as much they can about the artist they’re reading about, and don’t want this information to be compromised by images being added in. The magazine has also adapated these pages to have ‘Lady Gaga’ at the top. This shows there versatile and willing to mix things up a bit in order to really push their featured artist. Double Page Spread: This double page is instantly different to others i’ve analysed simply just because of the amount of writing there is on the magazine. Instead of having pictures to break it up there’s just continuous writing. I think this is because Q is a more up-class magazine compared to NME & Kerrang. Like in Kerrang and NME, Q also use the system of when starting a new category in the interview they break it up using a large capital letter. I think this looks very good, and breaks up the article well. I will more than likely be using this for my magazine. The big L in bright red really draws attention to the fact that this is a article on Lady Gaga. However, despite me thinking it’s a good technique I wouldn’t use it myself as I think it doesn’t look great when overlapping the text.