Magazine Contents Page Final

This is the final version of my magazine contents page. As my mock-up design, I kept certain elements the same like the title of the page, the categories of the articles and the types of articles present. I wanted to keep the title of the contents page the same font and colour as the mast head of my cover so that a symbiotic link can be created. I also decided to continue with the same colour scheme as on my cover to strengthen this link. I gave the yellow category tags black diagonal lines that kind of remind you of caution or police tape which brings up the feeling or trouble and rebelliousness. 

For the types of articles, I referred back to the feedback I got from by questionnaire. I checked which types of articles did my audience enjoyed reading the most and what did they prefer a magazine to have inside it. According to that information, I decided on how much of what type of article would I want my magazine to have. That is why there are more pages for new, reviews and guides, and less for things like competitions and quizzes.

On an issue of 'Kerrang' I was that instead of having the date of issue on the cover, they placed it in the contents page, and I think that that way it makes the contents page look more organised if all of the information about the physical copy of the magazine can be found one one page. It also means that the cover won't look as cluttered. I noticed that all magazines have a section where it gives it's customers the chance to subscribe to the magazine, so I thought that would be a nice way to fill in some in the corner of the page with something that was not part of the point of a contents page, but was just as important for a magazine to get more readers.

Lastly, I discovered that on most contents pages, there was a 1:1 ratio of image to text so I also attempted to make my contents page image heavy. I used pictures that have need taken from different parts of the magazine and placed them as smaller versions on the contents page. This would give readers a teaser of what they can expect to see in this issue. Nest to each image I placed a number of the page where the image was taken from, so the readers can just reference the number to the text and go to their article of interest straight away. And finally I placed my smaller images on top of white rectangles to make them have an instant photo looks so that the audience can feel like they just missed the action but the pictures let them see what it was like. These pictures are relating to the fans of the magazine and my target audience. The numbers next to the image links with the article they were assigned to, to show how some rock fans and my magazine fans show their appreciation and enthusiasm for music. I think my contents page fulfils it's purpose of helping the reader navigate through the magazine and gives a few ways of doing this.

I chose not to include pictures of 'Art by Law' because I thought it would seem to repetitive if they were on every single piece of work. However, if I could do this again, I would probably include them, since they are the feature article. It could also help create a stronger symbiotic link.