Q magazine Front Cover

Q Magazine Analysis

The artist on the front cover of this magazine is Florence from Florence and the Machine. It is an extreme close up so you can clearly see who she is, this is important because the main reason for her being on the front cover is to sell the artist. She is looking directly at the camera to engage with the audience and make them interested. She is also framed by her hair as this is her USP that means many people would recognise her by. It also means the writing can be white and stand out and still frame her face. As her face is the main focus point of the front cover if the writing is placed to frame her face it means it is more likely to catch the audience’s eye. Plus it makes the audience look at the picture more as everything else on the page appears to point to it.

In big writing at the top of the page is the artist’s name and a quote by her, this makes people want to read the double page spread about her. Next to the writing in the top left hand is the masthead. This is the biggest item on the whole page and is bright red; this means it stands out so it is clear what magazine it is-as Q is a very well known music magazine. It also reveals a bit about the genre of the magazine as the red connotates danger of blood which are part of the rock genre. The Q is in white so it stands out against the red background and draws your eye to it. The artists name and quote is in the same writing and style as the masthead so they are easily relatable, also all other headings and writing on the front cover are the same font and all in white, this continuance shows that all these things are related and typical of the magazine-all other headings in the magazine are most likely the same writing as well.

Blue is also used in the front cover but a lot more subtly, there is a pug used which is bright blue-this stands out against the orange background but also matches Florence’s eye make-up. All of the other headings also have little bits of blue in them-whether it’s an underline or a bullet point but it just again means all the headings and the picture are linked and it looks coordinated.The writing is in lots of different sizes so your eye is drawn to various different headings; if they were all the same size then they would look boring and people are less likely to want to read them. The most important parts of the headings are in the biggest writing so they are read first, it also means even if people are scanning the page these things will catch their eye and interest them so they want to read on and find out about what they are about.

There are a few things that are needed on a front cover, but they are not important to the audience so they are placed to be as inconspicuous as possible. For example the barcode, date and issue number, in this case they are all put in the right hand corner as this is where the audience are least likely to look.