Textual Analysis 3

Q Magazine August 2009

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 no banners on the front page of this issue except the regular one at the top of the page stating that Q is 'the UK's biggest music magazine'. We have a very basic colour scheme on this issue of black, grey, red and white. The background is formed by a large picture of Michael Jackson, which is the cover story for this issue; there is also a cover line for this story: 'Michael Jackson unmasked - inside his mad, bad world...' We have, as usual, the Q logo in the top left hand corner and cover lines along the right hand side; informing us of articles on The Horrors, Blur and The Killers. The artists' names are in bigger and bolder font which helps make the stories stand out on the page.

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 Michael Jackson and a series of images taken from inside the issue, on these images they have put the page numbers. There is no editorial on the contents page.

Feature
The feature out of this issue i have chosen, is Q's review of Florence & The Machine's album Lungs. e have the name of the artist in large, bold text at the top of the page, with the album name in much smaller letters beneath it; then, just under that we have the record label, the formats this album is available on and it's release date. then, under that, we have Q's rating for this album and a brief comment summing it up; in this case that is 'This year's most unique voice.' At the start of the article, the first letter, like every article in Q, is thoroughly enlarged to draw attention to the beginning of that particular article. we have in the centre of the review, a brief quote from the article in a box, we also have reccomendations for similar albums for people whoa re looing to hear more of this sort of music. In this mini column on the left side of the page, we have the album covers and a very short description of each. After the main review itself, we have a tiny section called Downloads, which suggests the best tracks off of the album. The spread itself has one page of text for the review and then a large mid shot of Florence on the opposite page. This gives an equilibrium between both images and text.