Analysis of a Magazine Contents Page

This is a contents page from the music magazine Kerrang.

At the very top of the page is a little personal article from the editor of the magazine, about the band on the cover of this weeks issue. This allows the reader to feel comfort through the magazine having that sort of family/community feel.

As well as this, there is the editors quote of choice from that weeks issue, and the page number at which it is. This could be a device used to attract people into the magazine, and getting them to delve further inside.

There is alot going on in the general layout of the magazine. Lots of images incorperated within it of the bands in this weeks issue. I think this is a good idea because it makes the magazine look more exciting from first glance rather than a list of text which may repel most readers.

The page numbers of the articles are made to stand out from the rest of the contents page by highlighting them in black and yellow. As well as this the bands that the articles are about are also coloured in black but are in bold to make them stand out from the rest of the text.

The main article is made to stand out from the rest by making the image incorperated with that article bigger than the rest of the images on the page. This is to attract the readers attention to this before anything else on the page

This is a contents page from the music magazine Q.

The layout of this contents page differs from that of Kerrang. Straight away you are made to notice the large image of the band "The Courteeners". This is done because this is the main article of the magazine and by making the image this big will allow the reader to view it before anything else on the page and hopefully fulfill its purpose and make the reader go to this article.

Another difference between this contents page and Kerrang's would be that the list of contents are on different sides to each other. Q magazine places its list of contents to the left of the page. This could be because we read from left to right, and the left hand side in media is seen as the most powerful.

Similar to Kerrang, Q has made the page numbers in a different colour to the rest of the text and made the font slightly bigger so that they stand out well and are easily identifiable. There doesn't seem to be alot going on in this contents page. The colour scheme is very basic, and makes the page look very blank. I will try and avoid this sort of thing in my contents page, because this doesn't really appeal to me at all.

This is a contents page from NME Music Magazine.

Again, this contents page differs from the above two and adds its own personal touch to things.
The layout of this contents page places its list of articles on the right hand side of the page. However, it goes one step further and adds a band index of all the bands mentioned in this weeks issue and also places the page number in which those bands appear. I think this is a good idea and i will probably use this for my contents page.

The overall colour scheme of the magazine is very boring, using alot fo black, white and red, like Q Magazine did.
This magazine uses alot of text rather than imagery, again similar to Q magazine's contents page. I will use alot more imagery for my contents page because i feel it interests people alot more.

This contents page isolates the main article by putting it in the center of the page and giving it an image. This allows the reader to focus on the main article before any of the others and potentially makes them go read it.