Contents Page Research

For this part of my research I will look at different contents pages of various magazines and compare and analyse them to see which aspects would be appropriate for my school magazine.

This is a really effective and attention-grabbing contents page. There is a colour scheme running throughout and they have stuck to three main colours being: red; white; and black. There are a range of different pictures on this page which portray the stories that will be on some of the pages. Not all of the pages are mentioned on the contents, only the ones which are important and appeal to the reader the most. The title is very striking and also clear. The page is not cluttered or squashed together and is laid out neatly. There is a red box at the bottom which is for ‘regular pages’, this is keeps the magazine running with a theme weekly and allows readers to find the page they want quickly. The font is clear and bold. I like this contents page as I think it allows readers to find pages easily and is interesting as it has many pictures on the page. I will take ideas from this contents page and co-operate into my own contents page of my school magazine.

This contents page has many good attributes to it and works well in many ways. It is very simplistic and there is one large picture on the left hand side which takes up most of the focus. The title is very bold and clear, but also has two different colours to it to differentiate it. The layout is very clear and sophisticated. However this could be portrayed as quite a boring contents page. This is because it is quite plain as there is a white background with only two other colours on the page. There is only one picture to focus on and therefore we can lose interest quickly. I do like some of the aspects of this contents page as I like the layout, however I would want to make mine more interesting for readers.

This is an adequate contents page. It contains a lot of pictures to attract attention and there is also a short description under each of the pictures and a page number of where to find that article. There is also a short passage from the editor at the top, which is common in magazines. This fills out a space. There is a bold and clear title and the contents information is laid out well and clearly. However I feel there are a lot of different colours on this page which can make it seem slightly overwhelming. Some of the writing is quite small and therefore can look like it has a lot of writing on just the contents page. I like the fact that they show a picture of the front of the magazine. I do like aspects of this magazine as they include a variety of pictures, however although there is yellow and black which is noticeable there is not much of a running colour scheme.