Contents Pages

Lesson Ten - 14/03/2011

NME
In today's lesson, we were able to look at various contents pages in order to look at its strengths and weaknesses. This is able to help us create ideas on how to design our own contents page when we come to complete our own magazines. I decided to take time to look at the NME magazine contents page and I found that it had more weaknesses than it did strengths. The first thing that I noticed was the bold title at the top which says ''SNAPSHOT''. I found that this helped to tie in with the main image that we were introduced to which was a man who was singing at what looked like a concert. On the left hand side of this contents page, I noticed that they went straight into a story which was kind of welcoming to the target audience as they were instantly informed on the story and what was going on. On the right hand side, were the contents that are inside the magazine. The font colour used was consistent and it made it easy to read as it was in alphabetical order and the consistency of the colour did not cause chaos or confusion. A good thing about this contents page is that it does not have a lot of things going on which makes it easier for the target audience to find their way round. The only bad thing with this contents page is that it did get boring to look at as it came across as being to simplistic and dull. Personally, it did not make me want to continue on reading the magazine as it just created a negative vibe and it did not excite me enough to want to read on.

KERRANG
The kerrang contents page was a lot different compared to the NME contents page. This was for the way in which it appeared to have more going on, but it was still able to grab my attention and keep me interested to read the contents that will appear in the magazine. I feel this was able to be successful from the way in which they used a lot of primary and secondary colours to take away the feeling of boredom. The use of colour helped the contents page become much more exciting and I also became eager to know what would be included in the rest of the magazine. This has shown me that they were able to keep those who were not really part of the target audience and those that were; interested.  Another positive thing that this contents page had was the ability to entertain before I even started reading the actual magazine. This was done by the way in which they used a diverse variation of photographs. I thought that this was a good idea as the publisher made sure that each photograph that was shown had its own individual purpose and link to whatever was in the magazine. It made it seem like it was okay to have all the photos on there as long as it did not cause chaos or confusion which was not the issue in this case. However, when I come to do my own magazine , I do not think I will use that much photos on my contents page. The reason being, is that I want to be able to keep my audience engaged with what they are about to read and I would also like to build exicte plus a hint of an emtional strain so that they beocme eager to want to continue on with reading the inside contents of my magazine.