Analysing Music Magazine Covers

The first magazine cover I will be analysing in a music magazine called 'Q'. The genre for tho magazine is indie/alternative and its target audience is for people between the ages of 13-31, Both males and females and for people in social bracket of C1.
To start with the masthead takes up around 1/6 of the cover which fits the normal codes and conventions and looks really powerful in the top left with the red background and the large Q in the middle of it.
The cover isn't packed with information and only really includes the names of artists. This isn't a bad thing as the main image along with the list of the artists should attract almost all the target audience.
In terms of the main image it does take up roughly 75% of the cover, as you would expect, and its stand out well from everything else happening on the cover. The main image also fits in very well with the target audience.
The colour pallet used is very simple and follows the common codes and conventions when using the 'rule of three'. The three main colours used is white, red and black. These colours work very well together as they complement each other and make the important stuff like the main image and the masthead stand out from the background.

The second magazine cover I'm going to analysis is another music one in the same genre (indie/alternative). The target audience is also the same as Q but they styles are very different.
From the first glance you can tell the layout is a lot more messy and has a lot more stories, images on the cover than Q does. Q takes a more formal approach and Kerrang has a more relaxed feel to it.
The masthead runs across the top of the cover and takes up around 1/8 of the cover. the colours used in their masthead is very powerful and probably is the main reason it stands out away from everything else on the cover. It has a white background and black text which work really well together and gives it that effect which makes it easily recognisable.
As I've already stated that this cover has a lot going on and this mainly due to the amount of text it includes. It has loads of popular bands written on the cover and this is used to attract the large amount of their target audience.
Kerrangs main image takes up around 50% of the cover and doesn't stand out as much as the previous one. But nevertheless the image is still very powerful in the centre of the cover and will trap a lot of attention when sitting on the shelf. Even though this is a very packed cover they still manage to follow the common codes and convention in their colour pallet as they have their main four colours being Black, red, yellow and white. You see the all the colours used individually with the black as a background so it makes all the text and images stand out from the background.