The purpose of a contents page is to tell the reader what is going to go into the magazine, they tell the reader what, is going to be in it so that the reader gets attracted and they want to always want to pick your magazine up, if they buy your magazine then you are going to get money and you are going to achieve profit.
Red=connotations Green=denotations Blue= planning.
Contents 1: NME
The denotations of this contents page is that it has a massive picture in the middle of the page, this is good because it gives the page more of a feel.It also has got sub-headings for each section of the magazine, you can see this as it has four articles underneath the news subheading. A third feature that is a band index, this is there so that you can see which band is in the magazine, normally the reader will flick to the contents page so this might draw them in. If they are looking at their favourite artist. A final feature is the title of the main headline, it says 'THE END OF ASTORIA' with it in bold, you are getting a idea that this title is important and that you will get people to read the article because it is important.
The connotations of the main image, is that with having this big image you are going to be able to get a feel for what the main story will be about. The main heading says 'THE END OF ASTORIA' with it saying this you might not get a feel for what the article is saying. If you dont like the title but you understand where this is then you could be more likely to read about it. The bold sub-headings do an amazing job, they split the magazine up making it easy for the younger to read, this is why I think that the target audience for this magazine is about 15-30, the reason why I think this is because the way it is split up makes it easier for people of a younger age to find what magazine they want to read, the subheadings also tell the older reader what sections are inside of these magazines, so if they enjoy reading about sport the they could look down the contents page and see that there is no sport section so they wont want to buy it.
For my contents page, I dont want to have one big image, I am going to have lots of different pictures, the reason for this is becuase im not sure I will be able to pack a big enough with one picture, the picture in the above contents is good because it has relevence the whole way through the page. The sub-headings caught my eye straight away I loved the way that they layed out the page because, it one; makes the contents page easier to read and it requires less effrot to do this and secondarily it tells you what is in the magazine and it allows you to look quicker through the contents to see if there favourite thing is in the magazine and whether or not they are going to buy it.
Contents page 2: Drummer
The denotations of this contents page, are that the masthead is big and bold and it stands out, there are lots of little images surrounding the big image, and finally they have a sub title group called regulars which has a list of some of the names and what pages they can be found on.There are connotations to this as well, with the masthead being big and bold this packs a punch so that more people will see it has a resembelence with the front cover, if this has a rembelence then people are going to become interested and want to buy your magazine, also if it is like this then people are not going to forget your masthead, then more people next time will want to buy your magazine. All the little images surrounding the big image, has a good effect, the big image still symbolises power of the page but the little images help the readers to imagine what is happening in the rest of the magazines. In the bottom right hand corner you have a regulars column, this coloum shows that this issue of the magazine has re-occuring parts from other issues of the magazine, this hepls to give the readers the continuity from issue to issue.
Contents page 3: Kerrang
The denotations of this magazine is that their is a editorial comment, this is about 16 lines long and contains information on what the editor thinks about the magazine. captions below the picture is another idea which helps us to understand what the pictures are about. My final denotation is the use of a comment about the magazine from a celebrity reader, this is good because it will help the readers to get a feel who is reading the magazine.
If you have a editorial comment, it is showing that the editor does more than just sit and read the magazine, in the comment he is going to put about what he thought was the best part of the magazine and he is going to suggest stories this will help the reader to want to pick up this magazine and read it. To go along side this a short two line comment from a musical celebrity never goes a miss, like in this editon you can see that 'Kirk Hammett from metallica' has a quote or comment placed into this magaine about his fellow musical geniuses. The connotations of the captions under the picture allow the primary audience to see what is happening in the picture without having to be told, these pictures you can see they also have a page number with it, with this page number it shows you where to go if you want to read about your favourite artists.
In my magazine I am going to have captions on my conetents page this is going to help the reader to see what is going on in the pictures, when the pictures have captions underneath the image then they are going to help get the readers to pick my magazine up again. This is because more people are not going to get confused and they are going to want to pick it up again. The final thing I am going to have in my magazine is editorial comment, it is going to be a picture of myself and it is going to allow the readers what I think the best part of the magazine is and what I would suggest you read.
Contents page 4: Q magazine.
The denotations of this magazine are that it has a review system at the bottom this just shows what has been in the music industry for the past week and what is up and coming in the music world, the second thing I am going to denotate is the every month coloumn this just shows what continuing stories are still in the magazine from every month. The final thing is the little bit of writing underneath the each story, this just gives you a insight into what is going to be in the stories.The connotations of some of my denotations are, the review system really does help to give a feel about what has been in the magazines over the last week and just brings them back up to scratch of where people are what has been going on, they also help people see where they are and the readers can easily find what they are looking for, basically what a contents page is used for. The every month coloumn does basically the same thing as the review section but it gives key bits of information and key parts of the magazine so for example on this it has where to find the crossword answers from last month. If readers want to find out where the answers are from the quiz the month or the week before they have to buy the next edition, it also gets used in newspapers this ideas. The writing underneath each article is good because it gives you a one line big impact insight into what is going to be in the article this helps the reader find out if they would like the buy this magazine to read these specific articles.The final part of my planning is about the writing underneath the articles, I really like this because if you didnt have the little bit of information underneath then you dont get to understand what is in the magazine, the magazines have got to have this bit of information because it will make the reader feel more into buying the magazine because you are catering for there needs, although by putting this in you could lose customers because more people will read what is in the caption thing and decide whether or not they want to read each of the seperate articles or if they would just prefer not to and not buy the magazine.
Planning
These are my 8 stages to my contents page, i worked out that i want to have my title in the top left of the page this would enable it to stay out of the way but people could still see it. I then thought that directly below it i should have the writing, this would able me to keep it all together, but then i thought that on the left of the page would allow me to have another picture that is one of my stories for my magazine try and gain more of a customer base. I decided to have 5 pictures on my contents page as it is good to get my customers on.
So this is how my contenst look, all the text together and not scattered all over the page which helps me to keep the page from looking really unorganised. Also the 5 pictures each symbolising a different story in my blog and this is good to try and get the magazine selling. The only difference from this and my last version is the fact that the proper version now has page numbers on the pictures to easily distinguish which is which.
