hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to this gq magazine front cover in specific relation to media language and representation this video is going to be particularly relevant for you if you study the educast gcc media studies specification as it appears on the specification from 2024 onwards the masthead gq is an abbreviation that a lot of people may not know what it means and so it's kind of become a recognizable brand even though many readers might not actually know the acronym underneath the magazine's masthead you can see it actually says gentleman's quarterly which makes this magazine feel as though perhaps it's aimed a slightly more wealthy or educated audience the fact that the masthead is partially obscured by the cover image and the constar is very conventional actually of magazines a lot of magazines do this and it's generally because the magazine brand is so iconic it's recognizable even when it's partially covered up and it represents the cover star as being the most important thing because it is often then that sells the magazine the sans-serif font adds to this feeling of the magazine being quite powerful bold and masculine raheem sterling as a choice of cover star obviously very famous footballer has been involved in several kind of world cups euros and is very recognizable to an audience who enjoys football this potentially helps to target a mostly male audience and the fact that he's topless may engage audiences male audiences who are gay so perhaps suggesting that this magazine has both a straight and gay male audience of course topless photos on male magazines um you know they help to sell the magazines sex sells so having him kind of slightly oiled up and topless on the front um helps to sell that image and sell the magazine and of course the kind of highlighting of his kind of six-pack and his muscles really reflects this popularity of a very muscular body for men in the media the way men are typically represented in lifestyle and health magazines like gq is very overly muscular and that's kind of relating to this increasing popularity of spornosexual which is nothing to do with sexuality what it basically means is this kind of increasing obsession with being very very muscular and built going to the gym a lot etc and that's an increasing pressure that is put on men in the media he's wearing quite a lot of gold jewelry which signifies his wealth and success his body language on this front cover is very powerful and dominant his legs are spread wide far apart he's got his arms down and quite kind of cool calm collected pose and his head is kind of tilted up as though he's quite defiant and almost challenging the audience and so it's creating a very dominant very powerful masculine image for him the leather trousers leather is known as being something perhaps quite rebellious quite aggressive material often we think about it in terms of like bikers but it's also quite a sexy material as well being black leather adds to this feeling of him being quite powerful and sexy there's some very kind of uh religious imagery going on on this front cover so you've obviously got the wings uh kind of coming out the back of him black wings no less so making him seem again very powerful um and almost holy in his representation and the use of that word guardian angel as the kind of main cover line on the front emphasizes and anchors that representation of him being a kind of almighty power um and being somebody that we should look up to and worship and respect and that's emphasized by some of his religious imagery on his tattoos as well so for example his cross etcetera so again making him seem as though he's quite moral um but also incredibly powerful and holy the cover line underneath that talks about raheem sterling saving football so again kind of representing him as a savior the protagonist the hero so adding this kind of sense of narrative to the front cover where he is going to save football um and so making him seem like a really good or great guy in the media it's often fairly typical to represent black men in positions of being quite aggressive and dominant although it's often in a much more negative fashion whereas the fact that raheem sterling is shown in a very positive fashion as being a kind of angel and a savior it perhaps challenges some of the more typical representations we see in the media often of um particularly of young black men and this may be reflective of the more modern context the fact that it's targeting a reasonably diverse um contemporary male audience and obviously reflects the context of um raheem sterling's performance within football in the last couple of years the color palette on the magazine is quite simple which is very conventional tends to be three colors on a magazine so black white and gold very powerful very masculine color palette but again it adds this sense of kind of wealth and branding and success to the magazine the main cover line is in a kind of serif font where the wording seems quite fancy and so that makes him seem quite sophisticated and dramatic and adds to this sense of his um kind of unusual holiness there's obviously a lot of kind of lifestyle fashion type fashion style type choices on this front cover however there's also some world news that's more political so for example on the left hand side of the magazine they've got an article about a dictatorship and so you're talking about some world news perhaps suggests that readers this magazine are slightly more educated that they want to have a slightly more political or rounded view of the world that isn't just about appearances there's the use of direct address here where they use the word use and so it makes us feel involved as a reader um and there's the enigma of this phrase as well that you as though we've never heard of this particular um dictatorship so it makes us want to read the magazine to find out which country or culture or society they're referring to the cover line about machine gun kelly makes it feel very hedonistic and exciting you know 74 minutes in the insane wild totally nuts life of machine gun kelly it makes it feel as though he is out partying having fun and doing the most exciting things and that's going to be very appealing for a lot of male readers who perhaps might aspire to have that kind of hedonistic lifestyle on the top right hand corner it talks about the picture exclusives inside the magazine that word exclusives along with the exclamation mark makes it feel very dramatic and exciting it gives the magazine a unique selling point that forces readers to buy this magazine rather than others in order to get this content the idea that sex is very sellable is really added to by this cover line that says all the sizzle from the gq heroes suggests that there's going to be some more sexualized content inside the magazine the description of westminster becoming a living nightmare is quite hyperbolic it's quite a motive language and again that makes it feel very dramatic and exciting the reference to andy burnham's master plan represents men as being quite clever and this is a fairly typical representation of men in the media at the very top of the magazine there are some kind of cover lines that run across the top here how to wear a broken suit and why it's finally okay to own a belt bag it's it feels quite um instructive as though the magazine is giving you permission to do these things and it's though it's a kind of teaching type figure a parental figure guiding us in what is okay and what is not so kind of really connoting that this magazine is there to teach us what the right things to do are and as though there is a right way to look or style yourself so the focus is very much on appearances here so that was my easy to understand guide to the gq magazine front cover don't forget to check out my channel for lots of other videos that could be relevant to you and if there are any videos you would 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