contents page analysis music magazine

The contents page for Kerrang is packed with images of bands that relate to the articles that will be featured inside the magazine itself. The yellow on black fonts are easy to read due to the choice of background colour and banners used to frame the main headings on the page. the light grey background of the page helps to make the rest of the images and text stand out to the reader enabling the page to be easily read. The layout of the page also flows well due to the placement of main images and large text. The star vehicles in these images are more often than not the lead singers of each band with other supporting members featuring in the shot. This page features an advertisement for the subscription to the magazine. Kerrang seems to be aimed at a target audience that consists mainly of white, student/working class, 13-17 year old individuals due to the more playful nature of the images (for example the Shawn of the dead lookalike), and text. My own magazine will be closely based on Kerrang so I intend to draw inspiration from pages like this, I plan to include a subscription advert as well as a main image to advertise the most important feature of the magazine. The font used on this contents page is large, bold and appealing, i plan to include something similar on my own piece of work.

NME's contents page is rather different to the one used by Kerrang. The page is mostly composed of one large main image that utilises a star vehicle (The Arctic Monkeys), this will be instantly attractive to the division of NME's target audience that likes this particular band but the opposite to those who are not fans. To avoid people being put off by the main image I intend to make use of more images to appeal to the wider readership.The colour scheme on this contents page is less appealing than that used by Kerrang, the page is mostly black and white like a newspaper which could imply that NME is the more informational magazine. The overall layout of the page is clear and structured, again like a newspaper, I want my own page to be more random and eye catching in different places so the reader's eye is drawn all over the page. This magazine also follows the convention of including a subscribe section, this is the biggest thing that stands out on this page and therefore must be included on my own. NME and Kerrang share the convention of using smaller subheadings on a black banner, this is also something I wish to incorporate into my magazine pages.

Q seems to be the most up-market of these three contents pages, it features a large main image that covers more than half of the page and it is supported by a smaller image of another band. The lack of pictures however may serve to appeal to a smaller readership. However the large red banner will serve to draw the reader's eye to this page, the use of colour in the main image is also appealing and distracts the reader from the plain white background. The font used on this page is very small and slightly italic, it is hard to read without looking closely which is not what I'm looking for in my own magazine. The font used by Kerrang is much easier to read and catches the eye of the person who is looking at the page, this font does not create the same flow that I have witnessed in other publications. The Q logo is prominent on this page, the same could be said for NME, however Kerrang does not follow this convention, even though I am looking closely at Kerrang as a model for my own magazine I may have to break convention and include the magazine masthead somewhere on my own contents page.