To analyse contents pages I’m going to be using the same three different music magazines that I analysed for front covers to keep some continuity, within the same genres. Each of these contents pages carries on with the same colour scheme of red white and black. This is the same colour scheme used througout all of the Q magazines and helps to give it an identity. The same Q is on all the contents pages; on the majority of its contents pages the Q is in the top left hand corner of the page however on the bottom image the Q is centre at the top. This tells the reader that there must be a reason why this is different to all the other contents pages where the Q is in the same spot on each one yet on this contents page the Q is larger, grey and in the centre. Perhaps this means that this is a special edition of the magazine, maybe there is a unique extra long article about a certain artist or maybe it’s an anniversary or festive edition for Christmas or Easter. Such as simple thing as changing the size and location of a logo by a few centimeters can make such a big difference. And, even as not a regular reader of the magazine I have noticed this imagine what this might mean for the devotees and what the implications of this small but powerful action is. The actual writing consists of maybe one to six words then a small more in depth description of the feature articles beneath ranging from five to twenty five words. This allows the reader at a quick glance to see if they like the look of an article with the larger more bold letters, this is often an interesting or controversial statement, and then the description beneath highlights what the article is actually about. The page numbers for all of these is before the writing, this is a little different to some magazines who logically put the number at the end of the short title so that the reader can look at what the article is about then see the page number straight away and go to it. However by doing this it’s a little different to other magazines making it stand out and make it more interesting instead of your usual contents page. All of these contents pages have one main photograph, which is larger than the rest. Often that’s related to the artist featured on the front cover. For example the contents page with Razorlight on the main photo is of the creation and construction of the front cover image with the artist stood in the rain in a studio. One of the contents pages only has one photo on it in contrast to another of the contents pages, which has some of the artists; cut out on it that has 6 different smaller images. I personally prefer the contents page with only one photo on it. I think that when you have lots of photos on a contents page it distracts the reader from the content of the page, the writing, and can sidetrack them from the whole aim of the page and you end up loosing the function of the contents page. On the other hand some people prefer them with pictures as they can identify artists from them. And, like on the contents page with many pictures they haven’t got a description for each picture, its just the picture of the artist with a large page number next to them, so the reader can look at the picture and go “hey look that’s Madonna I wonder what she’s been up to, page 50”. Sometimes the contents pages can also have a controversial comment/quote from an artist for example “I fart in your direction” quoted from Nick Valensi of The Strokes and pg12. Someone can see that and it’ll make them wonder why someone would say that so they turn to that page.
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