Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Jenny Strand

Q MagazineMasthead

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Q is a well established music magazine founded in 1986 and a new issue is published every month. The magazine prides itself on finding new talent while keeping the classics in the spotlight. From Alex Turner to the Gallagher brothers. Q Magazine features music genres such as folk and light rock. I think the magazine tries to bring in both an older generation as well as the young. In the magazine you’ll find the best songs of the week, reviews of singles and albums and songs what the Q team believe are up and coming and worth a listen. There’s usually always a list of gigs that are popular. I think because the magazines features all of this, it’s quite informative and people will buy it because it covers quite a lot. The main attractive of course will be who’s on the front cover and having the interview. Usually it’s somebody already merely famous so the fans will buy it. The Arctic Monkeys have gained more fans recently as they performed at the 2012 Olympics at the closing ceremony singing an old Beatles song which would have attracted the Beatles fan base as they would have wanted to see how they sounded and would be comparing. Either way whether they were liked or not, millions will have been watching them.

Q

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NME NME (The New Musical Express) is a music magazine that has been around since 1952 and is published every week. The magazine features posters, a main interview every week, little interviews of up and coming artists and a guide of the best music scenes around. On the cover to the left a good example of NME supporting both new and old music. The main image is of Morrissey and then in the cover lines it mentions Arctic Monkeys which are a relatively new and popular band. By doing this and mixing what genre of music features in the magazine, they will have a bigger variety fan base who will buy the magazine. The magazine uses bold colours to attract you to the magazine. As the front cover is the first thing we see, I think it’s important for a magazine to try and include what actually features in the magazine, but list the different kinds of things so that people don’t just assume the magazine focuses on one thing and nothing else. On this issue Morrissey is the main image which indicates to the readers that this issue will be a lot about him. I think NME have a good mixture of artists featuring in the magazine and they know what their readers like.

Cover line and main sells.

The main cover line is what the main focus of the issue is. So for this specific issue it was Morrissey so he was more advertised than anything else, as you can see above. Then the other main sells are to the side. Live reports, current bands, underrated bands and so on. This is what the readers will look at next on the cover, and sometimes those’ll be the decided as to whether it’s worth buying the magazine. The cover line will always be the main selling point and usually it’s maybe a different colour or font so it really stands out. Cover lines and the little cover lines surrounding are basically just a little informative to the readers to tell them what will be in the magazine so they get an idea. Cover lines are like over views of what features in the magazine and what the writers think are the most important things in the magazine. Without these you wouldn’t know what features in the magazine so would

Front Cover Comparisons

NME Q

• Reviews• Main Interview• NME magazine is dearer than Q and has a more cluttered

cover while Q is quite sophisticated and minimalistic.• Q is for an older more mature audience.• NME covers more rock music than Q.• NME writes more about new and upcoming bands than Q.

Ideas for my own magazines• Set out like Q magazine• Logo in the top left corner and a main

picture

I want to use boxes to highlight what will feature in my magazine, like NME.

NME Contents PageA contents page is basically an over all informative guide of what’s going to be in the magazine and telling you exactly where. It needs to have quite a simple layout so it’s easy and quick for the audience to read. I feel NME does that but still manages to add a lot of information unlike most magazines. By keeping the background white and using a colour scheme I think they managed it. The main feature of the article is in the centre of the page as you can see. This is because this weeks issue is all about that particular thing. So in this particular one it’s all about Oasis kicking off their world tour. You then see numbers darted down the right side of the page, these numbers are to indicate to the reader what page the next magazine feature is on. There are subtitles that specific ones go under. For example in these contents there’s news, radar, reviews, live and features. This helps instead of their just being random numbers and you having to read all of the titles to find what you’re looking for. Not all magazines do this. Then at the bottom of the page you have the ‘PLUS’ which is like a little extra for the readers which will be liked because it won’t have been advertised on the front of the page so the magazine holds something back for them so they don’t know the entire contents by just looking at the cover. Only the main things go on the front of the magazine, usually the most popular things with the audience that week.

Q Contents Page Here the Q magazine contents page is quite orderly. It doesn’t give too much away about what features in the magazine, only the big stories. It leaves the rest to the audiences intuition. This could be both good and bad for some people as some want to know exactly what they’re buying and by flicking to the contents page they can do this but others are just pulled in by one story alone so don’t care. Again on the contents page they have a slogan “Discover great music” and their logo and name. We also see that it sticks to it famous colour red. By sticking to this throughout the entire magazine, soon enough people will start associating that colour and type of font to the magazine as it will be extremely memorable. It would look quite cluttered together and out of place if not, I think. In my opinion the white backgrounds works really well as the text stands out vividly against it. The page numbers are clearly separated from the rest of the things on the page so they’re easy to see, by being in the red boxes it does just that.

NME & Q Contents Page Comparison.

• I’ve found that Qs contents page is a lot more sophisticated and minimalistic than NME however surprisingly to me, Q has more pictures on their contents page, NME focuses more on the writing side of things and only features one main picture which belongs to the main story. Q has a picture for the main story, then for smaller stories a long with their page number. To me NME looks more busy and cluttered than Q, I think this works well for the magazine though as NME seems to be more for young adults and up and coming artists/bands who want to know a lot things and about live shows that are on but Qs audience seems a little mature and you get this from the layout and how minimal it is, only highlighting certain parts of the magazine. Unlike NME, Q use pictures to show what the magazine features instead of writing. For example instead of writing about an Arctic Monkeys interview and what page it will be on, they just have a picture of the band and then the page number along side it. Personally I don’t prefer any magazine as I’ve read them both and they both actually have an equal amount of interviews and reviews and so on, even though the layouts for the contents pages are complete different styles.

Q & NME double page spread comparison.

The theme of the magazines are clear to see on these double page spreads. Q has a more relaxed and clean theme with Lana Del Rey where as although NME has took a slight same approach, the layout is a bit more brighter and looks like it’s for younger people with The Vaccines. Personally I prefer the Q layout more as it has a more feminine feel to it whereas NME is both. I think the font used in Q is a lot more sophisticated and mature, it looks classy. Due to the colours used in NME for The Vaccines double page spread, when these are both together, you’re attracted to NME first as the only colours used in Q are white and black and then the image of Lana. Where as by using blue black white and grey, naturally your eyes go to the brightest thing. I think they both have a good layout for the specific audiences they want to attract, as they are completely different magazines. After reviewing the front pages, cover pages and double page spreads of NME and Q I definitely picked up set themes what they stick with throughout.