Q magazine is a market leader in the music magazine industry and is considered as a mainstream magazine. It is published monthly by Bauer Media Group for a cost of £3.99. Personally i feel the target audience is broad as there is no indication of which sex it is specifically aimed at, but i would say it is for the ages of 21 and 35.
In recent years the circulation of magazines has slowly been falling mainly due to the emergence of new media technology. Just like the rest of the industry Q has seen a fall in circulation figures in the past couple of years, in the first half of 2009 Q was the UK’s best selling music magazine with figures of 100,172 but during the second half of the year Q had been over taken by Mojo as the leading music magazine, from the first half circulation figures had fallen by 5.4% and by 8% on year on year. In the second half of 2010 circulation figures had fallen significantly to 89,450 with a 6.0% fall. Despite these falls in circulation figures Q magazine has shown signs of convergence by developing their own TV and radio stations as well as having some internet presence.
The masthead Q runs tight to the top left hand corner of the cover. The title is in a white with a red background behind, this makes it look striking and easy to catch the audiences attention. The placing of the tittle in the top left corner enables it to be seen as on magzine shelves the top right corner is covered. The main colours Q use, red and blue, contrast and complement eachother. It also has bits of brown and green, all the colours stand out, are easily able to attratc the readers attention and also show the magazine is trendy and lively. Q maintains its house colours by using them in the slug and sell lines.
On the main cover you have a collage of cartooned, graphic and photographic images. The group pictured on the front is ‘The Gorillaz’ who happens to be a cartoon band. It shows the band memeber attacking the the masthead with a harpoon gun, it shows the band’s child-like behaviour. The wave they are riding is quite high, this may symbolize the fact that they are at the peak of their career as well as tying in with the sell line, “A star studded crew set sail again”. In addition to that the wave creates intertextuality. The attacking of the title with the harpoon gun shows the mode of address, by doing this it creates a mischevious but also fun and entertaining look, this links to the child like manner of not only the Gorillaz but also of the magazine. The wave has pictures of all the artists that featured on the Gorillaz new album ‘Plastic Beach’, this from of representing the other members shows intertextuality of a concept created by Katsushika Hokusai. Also the work of the sailor underneath the wave can be interprutted in two different ways, firstly it can be seen as a thought bubble leading from the sailor to the wave or smoke rising from his smopking pipe to the wave.
While Q magazine have not followed all of the general codes and conventions of magazine by challenging them they have tried to add a unique look to their magazine. Even though the magazine has a strap line – “The UK’s biggest music magazine” -, it’s placed right at the top of the page and above the mast head, where as it usually placed directly under the mast head. It also follows the codes and conventions by having sell lines, puff, barcode date and price however, it slightly challenges the conventions in various ways as the barcode, date and price are placed are placed above the sell lines. Also the sell lines are right at the bottom of the page and they look to converge other topics into this one music magazine (i.e. football and confessions)
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