Research

The masthead and logo Q is bold and stands out from the rest of the page as it is the only thing red, in some ways this makes it look slightly out of place. The word Muse is in an unconventional place for a magazine cover as the  headline is usually underneath the artist not above,  and with it also being positoned next to the masthead it does not look like a typical magazine cover. I like the blocks of blue showing the audience what is in the magazine as there are a lot of them and this shows that that the magazine has plenty to offer.

This magazine is also very unconventional as the image looks like it has been taken in the past as their faces have been edited to look very gray, this may put some off buying the magazine as it does make it look old fashioned. If a person had never seen the magazine before then they may not know what the name of it is as it is covered up by the artists head, I will keep this in mind when creating my magazine. I do like how the text showing what is in the magazine is laid out on the left, however, on the right it would look better if it was lined to the right hand side rather than the left.

 I visited the Q website and looked at the covers that they have on the website. They used a star rating on what the audience thought of the magazine, from one star to 5 star. This was one of the 5 star rated magazines. I can see why this is as it is very eye catching and effective. The colour scheme used of mainly black, red and white is very effective as it does not make the magazine look messy or unorganised, it makes the audience more drawn in as it looks smart and does not look as though it is all over the place. They use these colours throughout there magazine covers, this makes it more recognisable to the audience and make them want to buy it more. The logo Q is used for readers to be able to get the audience to identify the magazine and for it to be something that they recognise. The connotation of the word rocks on the caption represents what the magazine wants you to think of not only Cheryl but the magazine, initially most people would not think that Cheryl does 'rock' yet if the audience see this then they are going to want to read about it. I think that this is a popular cover because of the quality of the image used and the layout used around it. The headline is used as a pun and intertextuality as '3 words' is the name of her album and they then used 3 words to describe her. The masthead grabs attention as it claims ' The Uk's biggest music magazine', this gets the audiences attention as they will then think that there is not bigger or better music magazine so therefor this one will be the best to buy and read, getting more sales.I like how they have changed the size/colour/font of the text used in the right top corner as it makes the magazine look better, it is not boring and using all the same colours and sizes it is more appealing as it looks better. Also it highlights a certain part of the text, ' the 10 best' showing that this is what they want you to read and then you will read the rest of the text thinking that it is 'the 10 best' and it must be good. The image represents Cheryl Cole in a positive way, this is good and more appealing as she has had bad press and people want to know about her. The target audience is clearly for people who like and enjoy music and want to read about what is changing in the music industry.
Also this magazine was released in February 2010 and this is the time of year that Cheryl Cole released her album, this cover is then relevant to the music industry at that time of the year. People are more likely to buy a magazine featuring the latest music in the charts.