The Q magazine has a large title placed toward the top of the page. This makes it easy to identify and is the first thing I noticed when first looking at the front cover. It has a bright red background with the white ‘Q’ title. These colours are highly contrasting which makes the title stand out. They have used a Serif font for the title, this gives the title an interesting and unique look which was appealing to me. When looking at this title I can’t get an impression as to what this magazine is about due to its extremely short title, which could intrigue its audience to look further into the magazine. They have used red, black and white as the colour scheme. These colours are highly contrasting and mesh well together. It also isn’t too bright due to the fact that there is only one colour used. When looking at the colours used on the front cover I get the impression that the magazine is very stylish which would appeal to its target audience.There is a large dominant image on the cover of the celebrity Madonna, this increases the magazines popularity when associated with something appealing to the audience, in this case it is an ‘Idol’ or ‘celebrity’. They have used a medium close-up composition for the image, which enables us to see the facial expressions on Madonnas’ face. In this case she is looking directly at the camera seductively with her face partly cover by her hood and her hand, this attracts the audience.The layout of the magazine is neat and ordered well. The anchorage and articles have been placed around the dominant image, giving the photo its full effect on the audience. The barcode and price have been placed on the front cover toward the top right of the page. They are small in size which gives me the impression that the price is not the most appealing thing about the magazine. Due to this and the stylish layout I imagine this magazine would be targeting the up-market reader with an interest in fashion style and music.The anchorage on the front cover is advertising the articles within the magazine . They have used images to illustrate the text which appeals to the audience. They have also differently changed the size and appearance’s of the anchorage, seperating each article.

The contents page has used the same colour scheme as the front cover, familiarising the colours used throughout the magazine suggests a house style has been used in the designing of the magazine, it also creates a brand identity that the audience will recognise.The contents have been labelled with headings that helps the audience to find what they are looking for. They also have sub headings which title each article included in the magazine. They have used a large image to prevent any blank space on the contents page. In This case it is a photo of a boy band using a long shot composition. They have used This to illustrate an article listed on the contents page.The layout is easy to understand. They have listed the magazines contents toward the Left of the page. And have placed the dominant image and review to the left. I think this makes the contents page look neat and organised. Which will appeal to the audience as it is therefore easy to read.Another reason for the contents page being easy to read is the language and writing style. They have used relatively basic vocabulary as to cater for all adult audiences. It is also written in an informational manor with the writer talking directly to us. They have balanced the use of words

and images on the contents page. This makes the contents page look interesting and stops any large paragraphs of text from being ‘overwhelming’.

This particular article in the Q magazine is an interview with a popular band. I can tell this because of the questions listed in bold are asked by the interviewer, and the answers the interviewee gave in the content. To illustrate this interview they have Included on large dominant image of the interviewee. As this is a large picture they have chosen to use a long shot composition photo, enabling the audience to see the costume choices used and some of the setting. The large image also balances out the large chunks of text, stopping it from overwhelming the audience. In the article the interviewer is clever to ask questions of interest to its audience, for example in this particular interview he is asked such questions as ‘how he met his girlfriend’ and ‘what inspired the lyrics for his new album’. This appeals to the audience more, encouraging them to read the article. The font used for this article is a plain sans-serif font such as ‘Arial ‘or ‘Calibri’. This is because the text is rather small and needs to be easy to read, therefore a plain font is the best to use. They have taken extracts from the interview and changed them to make them larger, bolder and brighter in colour. Enabling the audience to see some content of the article which makes it more interesting and appealing to them.

When designing my own article I will take into account the audiences interests and wants to produce an interesting article that will appeal to them. I will also add images and anchorage to illustrate the article and make it attractive to the audience.

Here is a form of advertising taken from the Q magazine. As you can see it is advertising a music festival hosted by basement jaxx. This advertisment is music related linking it to the magazine theme and therefore is more appealing to the target audience. It also is very large, taking up its own A4 page in the magazine. This makes it stand out more so the audience take notice of it. They have used a large bold heading that stands out amongst the other content on the advert, and a bright colourful background to attract the audiences attention. They have made the advert blunt and ‘to the point’ with very little text and only the basic important info. This is so the audience don’t lose interest in the advert or feel ‘over-whelmed’ by any large amounts of text, as this would cause the to skip over the article and not fulfil its purpose.

We can see that these two magazines are very different in style. This is because Q is a music magazine, whereas Take a break is a real life chat magazine. Therefore they have different styles and themes that

match there target audience. However aside from this they both use a similar front cover layout. This is so the audience can easily identify it is a magazine they are looking at, through their own conventions of what a magazine should look like. Aside from this though they both have different colour schemes which match with their magazine well. They also use different fonts and have unique titles which are arranged in similar

but unique layouts. All of which contribute to creating an ‘image’ for their magazines which the audience will identify and remember. The influence of the audiences wants and interests impacts massively on the design and style of the magazine. As to make their magazine appealing and popular they must design and include content that is to the audiences liking, therefore the audiences opinion is they key to an appealing, popular

magazine.Therefore before creating my magazine I will map some ideas for the design and layout of my magazine

and put this to the audience. To do this I will create a questionnaire which will be showed to people included in

my target audience for them to answer. I will then take the most popular options and use these to design my magazine.