Front Cover Analysis

Q Magazine Analysis

NME Magazine Analysis

Researching Music Magazine Conventions

Front Cover Music Magazine Conventions

I studied the range of different genre music magazines below and have come up with some things that stood out to me as common elements:

• Headline. Most of them clearly show the main story on the cover with a large headline.
• Cover Image. An image of an individual or a band that usually relates to the headline, normally a head shot or a mid shot.
• The covers are always very busy filled with images and text
• On most there is a horizontal strip along the top of the page, this usually advertises something else inside the magazine
• They similarly have another strip along the bottom again often with stories from the magazine
• All the ones I have looked at have the barcode in the bottom right corner
• There are usually smaller images off the centre of the page relating to other cover stories
• If the magazine is giving anything away free for example a CD or a poster this is put on the left hand side, this is probably as magazines are stacked with the left side overlapping the next magazine so this would be visible to all the potential buyers.
• Usually bold colours are used however there is also a lot of black used with splashes of colour.