Contents Analysis

I have chosen to analyse the same magazine as I chose for the front cover. I believe that this will make the task easier because I can identify links between the front cover and contents page.
Kerrang is a rock magazine and most articles feature images as the magazines readership is 14-20 year olds. It is therefore almost necessary for the magazine to supply images because otherwise it would not attract the people from their target market. The contents page features several pictures. The images are arranged around a layout; two large images and four small. This supplements the findings of the front cover analysis because often Kerrang has a similar layout each week. It makes the magazine more recognisable. The advantage of having a layout contents page is that the readers can gather and read information quicker because they know whereabouts on the page to look. This continues throughout the magazine. The images in this particular example are the most prominent feature on the contents page. They give indications of the content of the magazine without using words. This again appeals to the target audience because they can look straight at the contents page, see an image of their favourite band and turn to the page they would like to read.

There are three main colours on the contents page; yellow, black and white. Each of these colours is very simplistic and adds to the reader-friendly content that Kerrang tries to create. This supports the front cover because the three main colours on the front cover are red, black and white; again very natural colours. The red has been replaced by the yellow. I think this is because yellow is a more bright and eye-catching colour. Therefore, the contents page would use it to automatically draw your attention to the big articles in the magazine. We can infer this because wherever yellow is used a feature article is shown. The font on the contents page is also very simple and reader-friendly. It is big, bold and clear; all the things that 14-20 males are attracted to. Titles and sub-headings are in bold; making it easier to identify the article you wish to read.

Overall the information is organised so that it is easy and clear to understand. The layout of images is very symmetrical, the titles and sub-headings are in bold. All of these things make the contents page effective because people don’t read the contents page they just identify the pages in the magazine they wish to look at. The fonts, layouts and colours on the contents page make this task easier.

The contents page also presents an opportunity for the magazine to include promotional features; this is because readers are almost guaranteed to look at this page. On this particular contents page Kerrang promotes its own competition to win tickets to see Slipknot. What I notice is that this promotional feature is in a yellow star. It makes the feature more eye-catching. This is interesting because the logo is not placed anywhere on the page. Therefore, the magazine has space to fill with promotions and images.