Contents Page Research

As part of my research for my music magazine I also have to look at Contents Pages on certain music magazines. This is the area I need to work on the most in the terms of my own work. My contents page was not as good as my front cover for my preliminary task.

This is a contents page of NME and the style of the content page is blocky. It uses a simple colour scheme of black, red, yellow and white within the text. It only has one picture which is good because this means the page isn't picture dominated. With NME they are very helpful and user friendly with their contents pages as on the left hand side they have a band index for people who want to find out more about a certain band. The font at the top shows clearly what the page is all about due to the sheer size of it. There are no words on the picture that has been taken so the viewer can clearly see what the picture is of. I have to take this into consideration on my music magazine because in the preliminary task I had text covering my models picture which made the point of having a picture pointless because it would be hard for readers to establish what the picture is. There is a big use of subtitles within this contents page, this will be to separate stories and not bulk up the content to make it look unorganized.

This is my second contents page that I have researched and again it is a an NME contents page. Again on the left hand side it has the band index for those who want to find more about a certain band that is mentioned in the magazine. This is very user friendly. Again it uses a simple colour scheme of black, red, yellow and white within the text. In this issue I have realized that it does not actually state that it is a contents page which could be confusing for the reader. There are no words on the picture that has been taken so the viewer can clearly see what the picture is of. I have to take this into consideration on my music magazine because in the preliminary task I had text covering my models picture which made the point of having a picture pointless because it would be hard for readers to establish what the picture is.

This is the contents page of the music magazine 'Q'. This is the second magazine that I am researching about the conventions of a contents page.The first thing that I lay my eyes on was the huge and bold red title which clearly states that this document is a contents page with its big black font and the issue number on the opposite side of the document in the opposing colour of black which is white.The font type is very consistent within this contents page. It stays the same for most of the document, except for 2 subtitles. But if anything, this is good for the document as it offers a lot of diversity. This contents page is different to the NME ones as this contents page acts as like a double page spread as well as a contents page. This is good as the content can be spread out in different areas of the page. This is a well presented document, but this is not the preferred style of document that I would like to imitate for my document personally. However I like the amount of pictures on this contents page and I also like the page number being stated on the pictures clearly so everyone can see what page to visit. This is a dynamic version of a contents page as it is also has a double page aspect to it. I would not like to do this as I believe it just adds more work to do and I don't think i would have the time.

This is the fourth contents page that I am analyzing and the magazine is again 'Q'. This particular contents page is a lot calmer and more structured than the previous one. This contents page is mainly picture dominated as the picture takes up a lot of the area of the page. This portrays that the main story of the magazine will be about 'Adele'. The colour scheme is very basic yet it look pretty professional, the main colours are white, red, black and grey. The stories are all very structured together in different colour boxes so that it is easy for the audience to navigate around the contents page. The font type on this contents page is fairly consistent as it only changes for one use of Italics. Overall I like the look of this contents page as it is suited for the type of contents page that I will be using on my own magazine when I create it.I am going to have my magazines contents page picture dominated as I think too much text bores the reader so minimal text will be what I aiming for in my own document.

This is the final contents page that I will be analyzing and the magazine of choice is 'Q'. The first thing I see is the amount of pictures within the document. The style of this document is most definitely picture dominated as there are four fairly big pictures and all of the text is in one narrow column so its not at all a blocky style document. All of Q's colour schemes are fairly similar in the way that the magazines always have a red strap line across the top of the page and the red underlining of the black subtitles of the descriptions of the article or story. This suits the style of magazine I want to create perfectly because of the picture dominated style of the document. I would also like to have my text within one column and this document really recreates this and is able to give me an idea of about how it will look when I try and do this.