I have analysed various front covers of music magazines.
The Q music magazine has a fairly big, recognizable masthead that stands out from the rest of the page and just under it is the slogan for the magazine. The cover artists pose and the way she's dressed shows that this issue, the target audience is men. The animals below her represent what the emphasised words are, which are "beast" and wicked". They're animals; "beast", and they're black which goes well with the word "wicked". The words on the cover goes well with the artists pose because it makes the reader want to find out more and what the article includes. The background is plain grey so the readers can focus on the picture and the various plugs. The colour scheme includes red, blue, white, grey and black. The layout of the front cover is elegant and not messy. This tells us that the age range would be from later teenagers and over, for men who find Lily Allen attractive. There are plugs at the sides and the bottom of the magazine to interest potential buyers into buying the magazine.
The RollingStone magazine has a well known masthead with it's well known font so they can place a picture on top of the font and the audience would know what magazine it is. The cover artists picture is made to seem like it's black and white picture on fire because of the story that goes with it; the destruction of the band. The picture is in black and white to represent the band as old, and they've made use of fading at the bottom of the picture just to show it's an old picture. The colour scheme includes red, orange, yellow, back, white, grey and pink for the pig. The pig is linked in with Pink Floyd- the infamous flatable pig. There is a plug to a conspiracy which shows it's not all about music, it's interested in government issues. This shows the target audience would be an older generation that have lived through the 70's because conspiracy theories and music like Pink Floyd were big in that era. There are also plugs to more articles to attract the potential buyers into buying the magazine.
