Contents Page Research

After completing my Front cover I started upon the task ofbeginning to research and gather inspiration for my own contents page for my music magazine, CLASH.

Despite not being aware of what magazine this is actually from. This contents page immediately caught my eye as its one of the most unique I've come across. Its unusually bare. This may attract a specific kind of reader as it has a fashionable element to it. However something which may look effective but very uneasy to easily read in the size of font used. Perhaps on a real life scale it may appear otherwise but from what I can see the font is far too small and as a contents page is key to a success of a magazine as it educates the reader into what the magazine contains it may defer potential customers from purchasing the magazine.

On a positive note however, the picture is very effective giving off a sense of simplicity revolving the whole contents page around a celebrity shown. This in my opinion makes the contents page seem very upscale. The contrasting small font and large dominant picture draws away the readers attention from the contents information of what the magazine actually contains and leads the focus onto the celebrity featured.

Another contents page I came across that caught my immediate attention is this NME contents page. NME like many other magazines continue throughout their magazine a very similar color scheme and font. This incorporates a very professional feel. The color scheme works evidently very well as they are contrasting colors which enables the text to stand out very easily.

The main headings are emphasized well by putting them in bold with a black background contrasting with the smaller text below. A definate unique factor in this magazine (even though its been cropped out by my poor editing) is the band index. This enables consumers to find out what pages their favored bands are featured in. So far throughout my research I have not come across this feature. This adds an element of uniqueness and individuality to NME. I would love to come up with something new and different to incorporate into my own contents page.

Here is a contents page from the globally recognized 'Q' magazine. The primary photo used here I find very effective as all 4 members of the picture are staring directly at is which automatically draws the reader in making us feel involved.

The color scheme used here is very common as its very similar to the one used above in NME. It's very simple yet effective. The plain black and white with a dash of red works very well and demonstrates that Q doesn't need lots of fancy editing as such as the contents is enough. All of the space used on the page is taken up and used yet again very effectively. When creating my contents page I would most definitely keep this contents page in mind as it has a lot of positive aspects to it which I could incorporate into my own contents page.