Analysing Contents Page- Q

This is the contents page for the 284^th issue of ‘Q’ magazine.  Unlike the ‘Kerrang!’ contents page, this one has a two page spread, and tells the audience what they can expect to read about when they purchase this magazine. As with all ‘Q’ magazines, they keep to a certain house style, which means that the layout of the page will almost always be the same style as the other ones. As with other ‘Q’ contents pages, it will have the same colours and font style across the page. The writing will always be on the outside of the page rather than the inside. The colour scheme will be the same or similar as the front cover, with the red square and the white ‘Q’ inside it.

The main article is clear as it takes up the most space out of all of the other articles, and has the largest and boldest font. It also has the largest picture and is in the centre of the page. This means that the audience will look straight at the image, and therefore are more likely to read about it. The editor of the magazine chose to put the most famous band, ‘Gorillaz’, as the largest image, as it would have drawn in the largest audience, therefore making them more profit.

The other articles are presented in columns down the side of the two pages, each having numbers next to them to allow the reader to easily find the page where that specific article is. The more famous/well known artists or celebrities have pictures next to the description to give the audience a visual image of the thing that they will be reading about. An example of this is the ‘Wayne Rooney VS Kelly Jones interview, which has a picture underneath it. This tells readers that this article will be about football, without them having to turn to the specific page.

There are no audience contributions on the contents page, such as photos or e-mails. However, the audience would have influenced what are the main stories/articles in the magazine, due to how many records of the certain bands/singers were sold. The more famous bands/singers tend to be earlier on in the magazine, and have bigger pictures, in this case, ‘Gorillaz’. This shows that although they believe they are passive, the audience actually has an active role into who gets put into the magazine.

This contents page doesn’t have an editor’s note, unlike the ‘Kerrang!’ magazine that I also analysed. However, as is common with music magazines such as ‘Q’ or ‘Kerrang!’, it does have a thumbnail of the front cover in the top right corner of the page.