Q Contents and Double Page Spread

Contents:
The contents page in Q is completely different to the one that is in Mixmag, this has a more upmarket look and feel to it, but then again the market for Q is a more upmarket audience. The house style of Q also helps to reflect this, the colours are kept to simple reds, black and white, these 3 colours help with giving it a distinctive feel and look.

The contents page immediately displays all of these house colours and the house style, simple fonts, the 3 colours it is all there. The first page of the contents has 2 images on it as well as an image of the front cover of this issue, the larger of the 2 images on the first page is shown to be about an article as it has a page number on it and the contents show that its to do with the Manic Street Preachers, on the other hand the other image doesn’t seem to have any specific relevance to the contents page but from the title of this issue i thinks its a band that have an album in Q’s top 250.

The image of the Manic Street Preachers has been taken where i believe to be china town has been given a retro look to it, the clothes, the way the photo has been edited in post production, it all makes it look likes it got a new take on an old concept.

The second page on the other hand has a lot more images on it but they are still following the same type of style as the CDI on the first page, a slightly retro look and feel, and again the house style has been applied to the layout and the colour scheme in the overall look of the page, the layout of these 2 contents pages has again been broken down into subsections so that readers can find the articles that they want to find.

Double Page Spread:
The DPS that i have chosen from Q is one on George Michaels new album ‘Faith’ which is going to be released on the 31st January 2011, straight away your eye is drawn to the article by the oversized P that starts it off, its easily 7 or 8 times the size of the rest of the text and so stands out from the rest of the page, the other side of this DPS is an image of George himself, which I’m assuming is the cover of the new release, in my opinion this image is keeping with the way that he is already perceived, retro looking, slightly camp, yet a strong masculine image.

As its a review there is a rating of what the magazine think of the new release, they also have a small strapline about it, on the left hand side of the DPS they have a section which is saying if you like this then try this and its a series of other artists and their music that they would recommend to their readers. This is a good feature as it engages the reader and may help them to explore thei own music horizons and find something that they might like.

There is a quote from the article in the middle of the first page of the DPS, its in a larger font, a bordered box and a different colour, the quote itself makes you want to read the article as it makes the review sound like it has more to offer to the reader.

I like the way that this DPS has been done because it engages the reader, it offeres advice and an honest opinion of the album, the way the quote is in the middle enticing the reader in as well, it all offers different ways that you can make your audience feel like they have an influence on the magazine.