Magazine Research: "Q"

"Q" considers itself to be the most critically-acclaimed music magazine. It is released monthly and published also by Bauer Media. It was founded by Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, because they saw a gap in the market for an older generation, feeling that their music was being forgotten. It was first published in October 1986, instantly creating an impression with its high standards of printing and photography, subtitled "The modern guide to music and more."
Paul Rees, formerly of "Kerrang!", now edits "Q". It is mainly focused on heavier rock music and alternative styles.

The main target audience are younger readers, with 1.9% of people aged 15-44 reading "Q" with only 0.3% of the people aged 45+, despite the thought that "Q" would be for the older generation. 1.5% of men read it compared with 0.6% of women.

Bauer Media announced this as their Audience Profile:
Open minded experience seekers, the Q audience don’t define themselves by the music they listen to. Music is an important passion, but their love of music will never be to the detriment of their other passions, such as film, sport and comedy.

Here is the e-booklet for "Q": Bauer Media "Q" Digipak

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"Q" represents its audience as being older than the other two magazines I've analysed. It takes itself much more seriously; and is typical of critical acclaim. It tends to review bands in an important manner, and judge them quite harshly, as though in an attempt to make them do better next time. It is seen by some as the old classic, that still plays the best songs from over the years, sticking to when music was best, and only including the decent recent ones.

Here are some older "Q" OFC's:



Textual Analysis

As with "Kerrang!", the newer editions have better appearances.The logo is always in the top left corner of the page, sometimes partially covered by the main image. "Q" tends to allow the logo to be the top layer of the magazine, sometimes blocking over the image, presumably as importance of the magazine over the featured artist. The palette is similar to "Kerrang!" using red, white and black.

Occasionally "Q" does special editions with several collectible OFC's, like this John Lennon one. They will usually show a variety of similar images with the same headlines but a slightly different layout to entice fans.