Here I used the front covers of an issue of Q, Record Collector and Mojo. I highlighted the interesting structural devices that varied from the ones used in NME magazine, which I am using as a basis for my own work.
General observations when analysing the front covers of music magazines:
Colour scheme- Always black and white are the predominant shades, red and grey are often interwoven, less commonly yellow and blue can be used.
Title- Is general short, catchy and in a formal, simple font. Titles can involve word play such as 'Q' and the use of phonetics to reference to 'Cue the music' in a single letter. Abbreviations can also be used, for example 'NME' stands for 'New Musical Express'.
Photography- The background image of a music magazine is usually a mid to long shot of a band. These bands often have distinctive looks and stare at the camera, band members are more often than not male and the most common number of band members is four. However, bands with three members, or just a front-man/woman from a particularly well known band can feature on the front cover alone. Moreover there is usually no background or a plain background to these photographs and sometimes the photograph can be in black and white.
General text- The image on the front cover is always linked to the contexts of the magazine by way of a main feature, always mentioned on the front cover in large writing on top of everything else. It is common from the name of the band/musician to be the title of the feature, this will be the largest text and can be accompanied by quotes from the artist and a short line of text revealing, very briefly, what the article will be about.
Bar code- Can be either portrait or landscape and is most common in the bottom right-hand corner of the front cover. Accompanying this will be the price, date and issue number of the magazine.
Other images on front cover- These can be a variety of camera shots from high-angle/low-angle to mid/wide/aerial/close-up/extreme close-up shot.
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