The main image on the cover of Red magazine is of hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow.On the front cover Gwyneth is showing a direct gaze towards the audience/reader; her facial expression is very warm and welcoming. It is a medium shot on her body. She is wearing a silver, pristine dress with a deep blue cardigan on her shoulders; this suggests that the focus is meant to be on the clothes that Gwyneth is wearing, this is partly because the genre of the magazine is based around fashion.
The cover lines have the conventions of a lifestyle magazine because there are a mix of everyday life essentials, such as food, fashion, shopping, beauty, homes, travel and health.

On the basis of her body language, she seems to be very laid back,The lighting behind her is very bright and seems to be outdoors. The bright white white can represent a purity of her presence. The font used for the main cover line is san serif; it says "CELEBRATE"this is a persuasive cover line aimed at the reader to make it personal, telling them what to do. There is a balance in colour on the front cover, within the border on the right side there is one word in red font for each of the three cover lines, on the left sided border there are two cover lines with one word of red font in each, but the masthead is also on the left hand border, and is red, this balances out the colour on the front cover. All of the cover lines contain this red font in order to gain the readers immediate attention as there are a lot of words on the page. Being in the left sided borders leaves space for the main image, making Gwyneth the centre of the direct gaze. Small use of serif font. The mode of address is friendly and chatty, for example, the phrase "wow" was used and a cover line also said "don't freak out".

A representational issue would be that there main image of Gwyneth Paltrow is not sexually explicit or represent her in negative way that so ever. In fact it has flipped the whole stereotype on it's head. The fact the Gwyneth is a middle aged woman, also reverses the stereotype of having very young models on the front covers of magazines. The cover lines also represent middle aged women in a certain way, one of which reads "wow decorating" which sounds almost very patronizing and sarcastic, as not all women are into decorating. Another cover line reads "Beautiful Wrapping", again implying that the reader should be inclined to find wrapping somewhat amusing and "Beautiful". The cover line "Vicky Pryce on speeding points, prison & what got her through" suggests an aspect of gossip, this is because the information given isn't necessarily important, because it has nothing to do with the reader them self, but it pulls in the reader in as they think they're being let in  on a secret. Due to the mount of cover lines revolving around fashion, it subliminally suggests that the reader has a lack of fashion in the first place, making the reader think that reading the fashion section is a necessity.