MUSIC MAGAZINE FRONT COVER DECONSTRUCTION 1

After completing my research on music magazines and how they are represented, I began to analyse examples. By doing this, I will be able to understand the ideologies portrayed through these products and improve my understanding on what to include on my own magazine.

The GQ magazine focuses on the male audience. The magazine is mainly centered around the pop genre but it also contains fashion, sex, movies and more.

The brand 'CQ' uses audience identification in the way they layout the mast head at the top left. The mast head is also effective due to the colour palette. 'CQ' is gold and 'British' is red. These two colours connote royalty and luxury which therefore evokes the sense of importance in to the reader. The editor chose Rita Ora as the background image due to the fact that it is framed for the male gaze and as she has a large fan base. Male readers are immediately attracted to the magazine as she represents the perfect woman being naked and seductively, directly gazing at the audience. The background image is also rather minimalistic which therefore emphasises the model. The large, black text reading 'Rita Ora' anchors the idea that the pop star will be inside the issue. The mode of address portrayed through the magazine front cover appears to be centred around a youthful audience. I can tell this by the use of cover lines like 'Kanye West or Jesus?' and 'The tweet that killed comedy'. These cover lines all contain relevant topics like 'twitter' and 'Kanye West' and both appeal to youthful audiences. The overall colour palette is gold, black, white and red. These colours all contrast one another which therefore makes the magazine stand out. There are various buzz words like 'EXCLUSIVE' which are used to attract the attention of the audience to make them feel as if that they are involved within the story. This is because the audience see the word and subconsciously feel that they are going to hear the story before any of their friends. The strap line in the top right corner, 'ELVIS LIVES!' is a form of retro culture as Elvis Presley was extremely popular back in the 20th century so when readers see this, they almost relive the past and want to read on about their childhood hero. The institution that creates the magazine is Advance Publications. They create worldwide, mass media productions like magazines, newspapers and websites. They usually produce content aimed at the older generation like 'golf digest' and 'architectural digest'. This example of a magazine clearly links to this idea of a middle class, middle aged male due to the taglines like 'real men don't wear shorts' and 'Elvis lives'.