Front cover Magazine analysis

This magazine that I have is Q and i was able to trade it with some of my peers to help with my research.  On the Top left hand corner of my magazine there is an attachments on it that says CD. I believe that this is to let readers know that they can obtain the CD or a reference for it on the inside of this magazine.  I personally think it was a good design decision for the company to go with the design for their company identity. As you can see the 'Q' is on the top left hand corner, it is quite large however it doesnt really encompass the entire magazine as I have seen with main magazines having their mast head cover the entire top half of the magazine. The colour scheme for the magazine is Red White and Black. The colours that they use have good connotations that can contrast and relate with each other. Red generally has connotations of passion love strength power and energy. With the genre of the magazine and what its trying to convey to its readers the usage of the colour Red was an excellent decision. With the colour White it has the colour connotations of purity innocence and also perfection. With the main image it correlates pretty well as it shows that the contents of the music magazine is pure and perfected.Finally the colour Black has connotations of power elegance and mystery. They also contrasted the usage of the colour Black with that the main image is wearing. Black suits are generally thought to be seen as a symbol of power and class which allows people to stand out from the crowd.

The main image which is Pete Doherty was a tad bit confusing for me at the start when i first saw the magazine as I thought it was Leonard Cohen but I then realized that it was the photo next to the name. However apart from that being the main issue that I had I found, The main image is quite different from the other music magazines that I had reviewed. The reason for this is the way that they had Pete Doherty pose for the photo had him avoiding direct contact with readers eyes which allows him to come away from the direct address that most magazines use which doesn't intimidate its readers or challenge them in any way.  Pete Doherty is wearing Formal clothing generally in black but with a beige hat. Pete Doherty is looking up and possibly with editing or the way that they had the lighting done it looks that there is a ray of light on his face which makes it looks like he is looking into the sun or that he is enlightened in a sense or it could be having him show a sense of respect or reverence to Leonard Cohen who has passed away and that Pete is looking up towards him.  Also on the front cover of this magazine there are small shapes that have information inside of them that I have talked about previously I believe, one of these is the semi-circle but the one I want to talk about is the funny circle. Inside of the circle is a discount to buyers which I think is a good way to obtain the attention of people that are walking past or viewing the magazine. They also made it more visible by having different coloured text to catch the eyes of people who are walking past. This convention isn't rare but it is certainly uncommon as not all magazines just show that they have discounts on the front of their magazine cover. I think that this I good but could also be a problem as most magazines are left out in the open someone could probably take up the magazine open and remove the discount voucher or whatsoever it is and place it back on the shelf.
Another convention that this magazine has is that it has the barcode at the bottom right hand corner of the magazine but not exactly at the bottom a few centimeters above and also not having it touch the  edge of the right hand side of the magazine. Also the subhead lines are layed out in a certain colour format that allows people to key on them without having necessarily 'buzzwords' but have names in larger fonts and in different colours. An example of this is on the left hand side of the magazine there it states 'BOWIE' his last five years, Also on the right hand side it has 50 in a large font size which also helps in getting audiences attention.