NME Magazine Contents Page

NME’s layout for their contents page is very simple, a band index on the left and the main stories on the right with a more details story overview in the middle with a related pictures. There are also arrows used to draw attention to certain stories within the contents page. They have maintained the colour scheme of red, black, white and a little bit of yellow within their contents page, by doing this it makes the magazine more uniform and you can tell that the cover and contents pages are from the same magazine.

Kerrang! Magazine Contents Page

Kerrang! contents pages are very busy with lots of pictures and lots of text compressed onto one page. There is usually a big picture at the top of the page with small views of some double page spreads. The bottom half of the page has a paragraph written by the editor on the far left and a list of all the contents with relevant pictures next to them. This busy design is very effective as it allows the reader to see everything and the use of small pictures of the double page spread helps the reader to find stories that they might like instead of just text, it is a very visual design.

Q Magazine Contents page

Q magazine sometimes has a double page instead of a single page for their contents page. There is usually one larger picture with a list of the contents on the left with different stories under categories likes features, every month, reviews and specials. They also feature a smaller image of a band, artist or group underneath the larger picture. I have also noticed that they will put numbers next to the pictures so that readers will know which pages the main features are.

Vibe Magazine Contents

This contents page is quite different from other contents pages. The layout is simple with only one picture, instead of having features and regulars or titles like that it has features and fashion, proving the point that the target market is females. The actual text of Contents is broken up which is uncommon.

Q Magazine Cover

This cover of Q features Dave Grohl the lead singer of the Foo Fighters is shown with fire and his band mates in his mouth. This crazy picture suggests that the story is playful and not too serious. This cover is reasonably standard, text stretched to make it taller, 3 colours of text, a circle containing the U.S.P.

One thing about this cover that is slightly different is the fact that the circle is not on the left, it is at the top but normally the U.S.P. is at the top left. This is probably because the Masthead is literally just the letter Q and does not spread across the whole of the top of the page.

NME Magazine Cover

This cover of NME features Lily Allen. Using Lily Allen’s pale skin, black hair and red shirt the main colours they have gone with are black, red and white. Although this is like the Classic Rock magazine cover that I have looked at the overall view is very different. NME have also used circles to show important information, although they have added an extra colour (yellow) to draw even more attention to certain points of the magazine.

At the top of the magazine there is text about the Arctic Monkey’s third album and the picture of David Bowie, these are some of the features that NME are using to try to get potential customers to buy their magazine. The magazine layout is the typical three column but the way the text is presented is very different to other magazines, I think this is designed so that younger people will buy the magazine as it is different and rebels against other magazines and straight forward text. Younger people like to rebel, especially teenagers, so this is one of the features that could be used to try attract the attention of teenage customers.

Kerrang Magazine Cover

Kerrang! magazine have a very niche target market, their magazine is designed for for people who find music the most important thing in their life, most of their customers are males aged 16 – 20. This particular cover of Kerrang! does not keep with the traditional layout of three columns, but because it is cheap to buy (£2.50) it has lots of regular customers who know exactly what they’re looking for. Kerrang! is not just a magazine but a media brand with its own radio and TV channel (the also sell Kerrang! branded merchandise on their website).

Some aspect of this cover are still typical, the main focal and selling point is written at the very top of the cover, “Nirvana birthday celebration” is written about the masthead for optimal viewing.

Classic Rock Magazine Cover

This volume of Classic Rock features Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin in a high contrast black and white picture. This magazine cover gives off a very different feel to Vibe Magazine. Although this cover still uses the three column layout there is more writing and it also has some small circles containing information that the producers of this magazine want you to read, they help to draw attention to key parts of the magazine. The key one of these is the circle at the top left saying “Free CD!”, a free CD is a useful selling point that could make all the difference when someone is making their decision as to which magazine to buy. The top left corner of a magazine is the part of a magazine that is most likely to be seen when stacked on a shelf, so the selling point is usually featured here.

Another major difference to Vibe magazine are the fonts, the fonts used here generally have serifs, this instantly makes the magazine more “traditional” as this is what serifs imply. This is very true considering that Classic Rock magazine’s genre is, as the name implies, classic rock and aimed at older people. Also the price implies the target audience as well, at £4.50 people in their 40s can afford to buy this magazine on a regular basis more than people in their 20s, who generally don’t have as much money.

The colours are also very different, using only black, red and white. This is effective as there is enough contrast between the white and red text against the black background. It also links with the black and white photo.

I like this cover and will probably use this as an influence for my own magazine.

Vibe Magazine Cover

Vibe magazine is a music magazine that mainly looks at the genre of R’n’B and often has female artists on their cover pages as seen in the examples below. Also the examples I have chosen all have a light blue and white colours in them with female models. I think that Vibe magazine’s target audience is females in there teen years to early 20s. The font is quite large and square, it has no serifs which implies that it isn’t designed for the older more “traditional” people. These covers also generally keep to the typical three column layout designed for optimal viewing.

Typical Elements Of A Magazine Cover