Q Magazine Cover Analysis

The music magazine Q is a magazine published by Bauer which showcases older bands and original musicians but is targeted at a mature audience rather than adolescents interested in ‘popular’ music. The magazine was originally entitled ‘Cue’ but the name was abbreviated to ‘Q’ to disambiguate from snooker magazines. The cover features AC/DC’s lead guitarists Angus Young who is an easily recognisable figure in the music scene. This would attract potential buyers as they would be interested in reading about this figure; also because his band is older, new interviews with it’s members would be sparse so it would attract fans. The image is a long shot where Angus is not making eye contact with the audience, which is unusual for a magazine as this is usually employed to help connect with the reader. The image of Angus stands in front of the title of the featured article. This makes the potential buyer pay more attention to the front cover as they have to take a closer look to read the text. The pattern of crosses at the bottom is something that is featured on many covers of Q and is part of the brand identity. Sometimes there is one large cross which means ‘plus’ to draw attention to the other articles featured. In this case there are many crosses to show that there is a lot more features than just Angus Young but this means attention is still focused on their main feature. The ‘Q’ masthead is a bright, bold red which greatly contrasts with the grey background. This draws attention to the name of the magazine but also makes the magazine look more sophisticated than if it was all brightly coloured. Underneath the masthead is the tagline ‘A different take on music.’ This tells the buyer that the magazine offers something different or something more than alternative music magazines, which encourages them to buy. This particular edition of Q contains no coverlines to draw in readers but instead relies on how iconic and famous Angus Young is. 'All new look issue' makes the reader think they are buying into an exclusive edition of the magazine; that they have to buy it as it is an event.