Music Magazine Contents page Analysis

Q Contents pages

The Q contents page is designed simply, mirroring Q’s house style with red boxes on white, with mostly black text in a formal font, and a black border around the title in keeping with Q’s idea that it’s target audience are quite mature and don’t need elaborate fonts to be drawn in and their professional approach. Similarly to the front cover, keeping with the magazine’s conventions it uses red fonts to highlight certain paragraphs.

What would usually be on a contents page is split over 3 pages, Firstly features, then regular articles, then Information about the staff and the editors' note are on the third page which is entitled ‘Masthead’. These pages are laid out in a simple style with almost entirely text one side of the page and pictures on the other side.

The pictures shown include images of Various bands/artists that are featured in the magazine, these are all next to a number for the corresponding page so as to make it obvious where you can find anything that interests you in the magazine quickly. These pictures show artists in ways that represent their already Strong Star Images for example showing Matt Bellamy in a reflective silver jacket representing the progressive elements to his music by looking futuristic, almost out of a science fiction, complemented by his oversized bright orange glasses, and Ant and Dec wearing suits facing towards each other with turned heads smiling at the camera with a direct mode of address, representing their professionalism but also their approachability as friendly presenters who usually directly appeal to their audience. The other pictures are screenshots from the magazine articles inside the magazine, these are included to help the audience recognise these articles whilst flicking through the magazine.

The text under each listed article is a very short description of the feature it relates to, generally it either links to the front cover in some way to show it as the same article, while continuing with a Unique Selling point it’s identified as effective for example it continues the idea that Matt Bellamy is mad from the front cover. Otherwise it will often try to make this text comical to draw in it’s audience with wit.

NME contents page(due to large size had to scan twice to include all things referred to in my analysis)

NME’s Contents page is very simple and can be broken down into four main sections. The background is simply white and the colours used for graphics are red and black, using a lot of reversed out text to stand out.

The right hand side of the page has the contents, divided into each section of the magazine on arrow graphics that point to the edge of the page, each being a different colour to show the separation of sections, each sections with a small image attached showing one of the bands featured in the section, with the corresponding article highlighted within the section and the cover stories clearly labelled so anyone who bought the magazine for a cover story can find it easily.

There is a section at the bottom advertising a subscription, although all magazines have this, where it is placed varies, the image shows several back issues of the magazine representing itself as interesting showing a range of different bands covered.

On the left there is a band index, this is very useful to look over and find any mention of a particular band in the issue and skip straight to it. This keeps strongly to the House style colours of the magazine it also has the logo above this to work as a title and increasing it’s own recognisability.

The centre of the page has a small article on a member of a band which changes every week, it also mentions “what I’ve been listening to” for the artist. This appeals to the audience as it allows an inside scoop on an artists and allows the audience to relate to them by comparing music taste.

The Jazz Rag Contents page

The Jazz Rag continues it’s house style of a simple design based around boxes, continuing the simple font variating the boldness and size to separate different text. There is one photo linked to the main article clearly and simple intergrated into the design. Appealing to the target audience by not being in their face.The image shows formally dressed people smiling, this represents them as happy professionals, the target audience will either be able to relate or aspire to this.

The lines explaining each item listed on the contents are very simple direct explanations of the articles, not trying to make any puns or references, again this represents the straightforward, serious nature of the magazine.

Also included on the contents page is the start of a general interest article about a current political issue on the playing of live music, this shows the target audience are politically interested serious people, this article works well being short, but spread over two pages to draw the reader into the magazine.