Contents Page

Analysis of a magazine contents page

This is my analysis of a metal magazine contents page, I liked how it was so clear and still looked well designed and visually pleasing.

I really liked that it had two columns, one for the features and one for the regular pieces, that's something I think I would like to put into my contents page. Something I wasn't too keen on was the amount of photos in it though, I liked that it was visual but the contents page isn't an area where people want to look at photos, it's more of a reference page.

This is my contents page. I didn't like the look of having too many photos but I made it slightly more visual by adding the design in the background and one photo. I found it difficult to think up all the articles but the professional contents page I looked at was helpful, so I used the same kind of format.

Double page spread plan

As you can see my plan for my double page spread is extremely simple. While looking through professional spreads I tended to find that they were mainly constructed of visual elements and large wording with the text crammed into the bottom of the page.

Double Page Spread Research

The give me a greater insight as to what the conventions of a double page spread are, I decided to look at a couple.

This one is a double page sread from NME:
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And this one is Kerrang!:

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ACID Rate Card

Photos

Here are the photos I was choosing between for my magazine cover:

This is the one I ended up choosing; I liked the pose, the face and the space around the model.

This one is at too much of an angle, the head is where the masthead would be and most of the body would end up having to be cropped out. I like it as a photo though, and it may come in handy for my double page spread.

I think this is an interesting photo but there's too much of the model. It would have been better if it was zoomed out a little bit, but for a cover photo I don't think it would have worked, the face is very important.

 I want to use this one for the double page spread but it's absolutely no good as a cover photo.

Diary

I finally have my front cover up so I can hurry up with everything else I have to do! The cover took me longer than I would like to admit, so I'm going to have to make up for lost time. The next thing I'm going to do is get a few people to answer my lifestyle questionnaire, hopefully the results should be up very shortly.

Lifestyle Questionnaire

This is the lifestyle questionnaire that I will have some people answer:

1) Which of the following age brackets are you in?:

      (16 and under)    (17 - 20)   (21 - 26)    (27 - 30)   (30+)

2) Do you or have you ever owned an iPhone?
       Yes             No

3) Do you invest money in good quality headphones?
       Yes            Sometimes         No

4) How many concerts/gigs would you say that you attended per year?:

       1 - 5             6 - 10            11 - 15       16 - 20        20+

5) Which genre of music out of the following do you prodominently listen to?

        Pop            Rock         Metal         Classical        Hip-hop/Rap

6) How many hours per day would you say you listened to music? :

       0 - 1hr        2 - 3hrs       4 - 6hrs         7hrs+ 

7) What do you think of the name 'ACID' for a metal magazine?

       Terrible         Bad             Okay          Great         Excellent

8) What do you think of the colour scheme of this cover?

       Terrible         Bad             Okay          Great         Excellent

9) What do you think of this issue's cover photo?

       Terrible         Bad              Okay         Great         Excellent

10)  Do you think that the price of this magazine (£2.50) is fair?

       No             Maybe            Yes