Textual Analysis on other Music Magazines - Contents Pages



For my first look at contents pages I decided to look at this example from Kerrang! magazine which to me at first looks a bit crowded and I am not loving the layout of it. I like contents pages where theres only a couple of well placed images not lots all stacked up in cubes like in this example. Its not terrible but I believe theres a better way of displaying contents pages than this, my next analysis on a contents page will probably be the one I like. I have heard that Kerrang! is a weekly magazine instead of being monthly, so perhaps this layout is too sum up everything thats happen in music in the past week or perhaps its the fact that these magazines do not have alot of pages so they must place as many images as possible in each magazine. There is an editorial at the top of the page which is displayed quite well with a smaller image of the magazines front cover, this is done in alot of magazines so I may try to do the same to make my contents page look more professionally written. The graphics on this page seem to be quite plain and theres not alot of colour but its still effective, theres alot of images though and each cube seems to have a shadow effect behind it making it seem like its hovering, this is quite a good effect to use because it makes the page look slightly 3-D. Each picture featured on this page has a caption which includes a number is well that shows the page its on, I may do this with my magazine but i'm not going to use as many images as they have in this one, so I may place a picture right next to the page shown in the contents list, I think this will work but I may decide to make my contents page more like the contents in Q magazines where you have one good image of a band and a small caption to go with it.

For my next and last analysis on contents pages I decided to look at this example from Q magazine, I quite like the style and look of Q its all quite modern and looks professional, it really looks like they've put time and effort into it. Also Q seems to always keep to the same colours and this makes the inside of the magazine instantly recognisable because the colours are always used in the same way and the images are always displayed in the same style. Its also very clear and displayed well, you can find the page you want very easily because its so clear. This magazine doesn't use many graphics like in the Kerrang! magazine, earlier there was a shadow effect beneath the images that made the page look slightly 3-D but Q doesn't seem to use these effects it just neatly sets the pages out in sections and really uses the space it has well, I like this type of set up.