Magazine Contents Page analysis and comparison

Chosen Magazine: NME

Section A: Music Magazine Contents page analysis

The contents page to this magazine has used the majority of the space on the page; it is filled with a variety of features, from images to text. The layout is constructed to have a simple layout, yet use all of the available space which makes it seem less simple, they do this to show the magazine as full up of interested topics surrounding music. The magazine uses images on the contents page, however text is mostly used. The main image on the contents page is of the main story; it is an extract taking from the main article to show the readers what is inside. At the bottom of the page there is an image of their magazine; this is a promotional feature and shows that they’re advertising themselves and showing that you can and they want you to ‘Subscribe’ to their magazine. Down the left-hand column, they use a ‘band index’; they've done this so the people reading can specifically find the page where the bands they’re interested in are. They've also done it to show a variety of bands in the magazine to try to appeal to a wider audience.

They use a simple colour scheme throughout, keeping it to the same colours, Red, White and Black. These colours represent boldness and attract people, as well as being neutral colours. As the colours are quite dark mixed with some lighter ones, it grabs people’s eye and they are drawn to it.  The use the same variety of fonts throughout; for the masthead, they use the same bold font, with the magazine’s name ‘NME’ always being in red; the use of this attracts the audience to their name and gets people knowing their name. They also use the same fonts on when mentioning what’s inside the magazine; breaking them up into different sections, for example NEWS and LIVE! The font used is bold and clearer for the sections and small and not bold for the articles listed. For the title as well, they use bold font to attract people and to try and attract people to read the article.

The use of a bold theme throughout the magazine suggests the people who made it are bold and powerful. The use of bold shows them that they can attract people to their magazine as it stands out, as well as trying to attract different audience to different articles in the magazine.

The use of the organized sections, talked about above, suggests that the magazine is organized and is trying to appeal to a wider audience bracket. When the readers look through the contents page they can find the list of what they’re interested in, rather then the magazine being one long list.

The full name of ‘NME’ is ‘New Musical Express’; they changed it into acronym and made it as their logo. The logo is used throughout the magazine, whenever you see ‘NME’ in red bold letters, it is where the magazine is trying to promote itself and make sure you remember their name.  Where the logo is placed on the contents page, in the masthead ‘NME THIS WEEK’, it creates a dominant, powerful effect, this is because it is the only red bold text on the page; this attracts people to it more than any of the other text.

The look of the contents page, suggests it’s aimed at an older audience, from 18-26, however the use of a variety of music suggests it can be aimed at a broader demographic in a younger and older age bracket. As well as aiming at people that enjoy these bands; by creating a band index to target more people.

  

Section B: Comparison with another music magazine contents pageComparison magazine: We Love Pop

Differences:

‘We love pop’ magazine focuses on a different genre to ‘NME’ magazine; shown in the title Pop, and abbreviation of popular, this magazine’s genre is Pop music. Suggested through the layout of the contents page and the use of colour scheme (pink, black and white), the magazine aims at young girls 10-16 who enjoy this genre of music. It suggests young girls through the use of the colour pink. As well as through their logo; their logo is in the top right-hand corner of the page; the logo has a heart on it which would also link and suggests young girls as their target demographic.

Unlike ‘NME’, ‘We love pop’ uses a more equal amount of text and images spread across the page, rather than just having one main image on the contents page. ‘We love pop’ uses a variety of images, this is to show clearly what is included in the magazine, especially as it is targeted at young girls, who are more likely to be interested in pictures rather than text. They show the main image of the girl band bigger, with a bigger page number on top of it, to represent it being their main article. They have also put 3 other pictures down the right hand side of the page, with page numbers, they are smaller as they are the other articles inside the magazine, but not the main one the magazine is focusing on in the issue. In all of the main photographs on the contents page, they have included taglines underneath each of the pictures, with a quote from the article, they've done this to give people an insight into what is included in the article to get the readers interested and attracted to the article.

Similarities:

Like ‘NME’, ‘We love pop’ magazine also presents their logo on their contents page; they as well include it as a part of their masthead, however the only difference is, instead of having the logo in their masthead, like ‘NME’, ‘We love pop’ creates it as an extension from their masthead titled ‘We love this…’. Being as their logo is ‘We (heart) pop’ in a speech bubble, they have used it to create this extension. In addition, similar to ‘NME’ logo, ‘We love pop’ logo is also in capital letters, which suggest they also want people to remember their name. What’s more is that ‘We love pop’ is using it and the speech bubble as an expression as shouting to represent how much they “love pop”. Lastly, ‘We love pop’ also uses promotional features, by placing an image of a front cover of their magazine in the contents page. This is to show that there are serial and can also subscribe to them, similarly to what ‘NME’ did.