Q contents Page Analysis

Hey Everyone,

For my second contents page analysis I chose to do a Q contents page. I really like the layout of this contents page. I like how it has all the information about each page down the right hand side of the page and then on the left has pictures that go with certain big stories. This is quite a blocky looking contents page but different to the last contents page I analysed. For my contents page I think I will do a similar style as I want it to be a blocky look as this fits in with the style of music I have chosen to do and typical magazines of that style. I like the layout of this page because everything is easy to see and read and I want my contents page to be like that. I also really like the colour scheme, how they have used the colours of the Q logo; red and white, and used these two colours for the entire page and this works really well for them as it’s their house style colour. They have kept the writing for the titles and descriptions of the stories in black and then added a red line between each story to separate the stories and to add more of the house-style to the page. For my contents page I would like to do a similar thing and use the colours from the name of my magazine to create my own house-style colours so I can use them in a similar way so people will recognize the colours and styling as being my specific magazine. I’m not sure what colours I want to use yet but I will hopefully use colours that are bright and will stand out as well as be colours that appeal to my target audience. Another thing I like about this contents page is the way they have used large page numbers to go with the pictures on the left hand side so that people can see the image and if they think they know the artist and want to read about them they don’t have to search down the list of articles to find that one because the page number is right there. They have also made these numbers white in a black box which is a similar style to the name of Q with the white letter in the red box, so they are continuing with the style of that and applying it to other things and it looks really good because it ties in with everything else on the page because of that. For my contents page I want to try and do something interesting with my page numbers too. I might use the idea of having a few large numbers that go with the pictures on the contents page which would be the main stories. I’m not sure if I would use the idea of putting the numbers in a box although I do think it works well for this magazine and it does make sure that the numbers stand out but it depends of whether that style fits in with the style of my magazine. My final point about this contents page would be the small details that they have put at the bottom of the page, they have out the Q logo at the bottom of the page as well as the page number and the date of the magazine. On the other side of the bottom of the page they have put a website name. This is a typical convention of a contents page to have the date or the issue number and then the website details at the bottom of the page but they have made sure to put this information in their house-style again. For my magazine I will include a website name and the date and possibly an issue number as it’s a typical convention so I should probably include these anyways, plus I think it gives a little extra touch to the magazine and makes it look more professional.