Annotated Examples Of Existing Texts - Contents Pages

Contents page analysis (1) from avapetal

Contents pages are all designed with the same aim in mind: for it to be a simple page that can easily be used to navigate the rest of the magazine. They are all quite different though due to their demographics and mode of address. Kerrang magazine have positioned their masthead on the contents page in order to reinforce their brand identity. This acts as a continuous reminder that the audience are reading Kerrang magazine. Spin magazine have used the colour red sparingly in order to keep the page simplistic and mature whereas the page feature the kings of leon has no particular colour except from the colour black and the various colours within the images. The contents is all put into separate boxes to make it easy for the reader to look through and process Kerrang have chosen to split the page in half horizontally with the image taking up the top half and text the bottom half. The text is all split into columns under various headings made to look as exciting and enticing as possible. This suits the teenage, male demographic who like this chaotic, random effect as they seem to have a lot going on and can be sometimes considered as having 'crowded' lives. In complete comparison Spin and the other magazine are very well organised and uncluttered. Their demographic is clearly more mature. The fact that Spin only has a fewer contents suggests that rather than just flicking through the magazine they are forcing the audience to read the whole magazine. The conventions are all quite similar in that none of the pages have the word 'page' in them. Also, although Kerrang is the only one of the three to have an editor's note, it is a convention that a lot of other magazines have followed. The use of images are chosen carefully as they want to use popular artists in bigger pictures in order to excite the audience and cause them to go through the magazine seeking out the page of the artist they wish to read up on.