Textual Analysis 2

Q Magazine December 2009 issue

Overview

This magazine is specifically aimed at all music fans, not so much metal and heavy rock fans, but it still contains articles with rock groups as well as ppop singers, like the cover star of this issue. Q is very much a lifestyle magazine, as it is quite gloosy and more 'clean cut' than others on the market; i'd say it was aimed at people in their 20s and up. Q is a mass market product and is published by Bauer London Lifestyle Ltd.

Front Cover

We have the banner showing us the highlight of this issue - The Q Awards results. We have a very royal and majestic colour scheme on the page of Red, Gold, Black and White; these are co-ordinated colours as they compliment each other. There are two banners on the page: one across the top informing us that this the awards issue, and one two thirds of the way down the page, informing us of the winners, but not the awards they won. This is cleverly used to lure the reader in so they can find out who won which award. There is also a cover line incorporated into the second banner, telling us about an interview with Arctic Monkeys. We also have cover lines at the bottom of the cover, informing us of articles about Oasis and Robbie Williams. Q being quite a glossy and upmarket magazine, feature some of the most popular artists in music today, hence why it can charge £3.90; just on the front cover the list of artists featured in this issue alone include Lily Allen, Muse and Lady GaGa. For the background, we have a long shot of the Arctic Monkeys in black and white, to keep with the colour scheme, all except the Q award which is in gold, yet it keeps with the colour scheme also.

Contents Page

The contents page takes up two pages and has shots of the featured articles within the magazine, along the bottom, to show some of the articles people might be interested in. Q also uses an original system of sorting theres contents' lists between "regulars" and "features"; the "regulars" section is for everything that is usually in Q, and the "features" is for everything specific to this issue. For most of the articles lsited, we have a title for each and a few sentences that form a cover line. The only excpetions to this is the "Q review" section which gives a cover line, but gives specific examples of what is being reviewed, it entices the reader in with examples of the most anticipated album reviews. The centre of the page is taken is taken up by another shot of Arctic Monkeys and a series of images taken from inside the issue. There is no editorial on the contents page

Feature

Part of the main article of this issue, which is the Q awards results, is an interview with the winners of the Best Live Act award - Arctic Monkeys. As this is such a 'big' award to win they receive an eight page spread. Compared to the other articles on the winners of big awards ( Lily Allen - Best Track, Sonic Youth - Q Innovation In Sound and Kasabian - Best Album), they all have a spread varying between 2 and 5 pages. This shows how important both the award and the band who won it are, to our music industry. On most of these pages we have a 60/40 split between images and text; the images in this article mainly refer to the award that they won, as most of the images are of them warming up on stage before a gig or relaxing back stage. Throught the pages we have quotes from the article that are enlarged to grab the readers attention, lines such as 'one of ourmates was goin to get our faces tattooed on his arse' draw the reader in as they are quite obscure and make the reader want to read more of the arrticle.