Analysis of Professional Contents Pages

Main Images Classic Rock magazine uses the main image of the Rolling Stones in order to allow the readers to establish what the biggest story in the magazine is and to grip the readers of the magazine into reading about the band- it also enables fans of the band to want to read the magazine. The use of one main image contrasts to that of Clash magazine because it uses multiple images that are very bold in order to alert the readers into knowing what artists are featured in the magazine.

Page Numbers  All of my chosen music magazines use page numbers in order to follow a simple format for the contents page.  As well as this, the page numbers allocate the image to the article for example in Clash magazine’s one and Rolling Stone’s contents page.  Moreover the contents page allows the reader to know how long the magazine is, for example Metal Hammer is about 130 pages long and the contents page reaches this limit.

Feature Articles  Feature articles are used in the professional music magazines constantly in order to make the magazine look more desirable and unique.  Classic Rock magazine simply uses the names of bands and artists as the article names so that the fans of the bands or artists will read the magazines.  Total Guitar magazine also uses this technique but it also uses article names such as ‘Write Your Filthiest Riff Yet!’ in order to persuade readers into buying the magazines.

Sublines  In the magazines that I found, the contents pages use sublines in order to tell the audience what the article is about and what will be included in it.  Metal Hammer uses the subline for their ‘Slipknot’ article to alert fans that the featured band of ‘Slipknot’ is releasing a new album.  As well as this, Total Guitar uses the subline for their feature article, ‘Brit Spirit’ to explain what the article is about and to convince the audience to read the article.

‘Contents’  The word ‘Contents’ is often written on the top of the contents page in order to tell people where they should look to find their desired article.  Clash magazine has a double page for the contents page therefore their word ‘Contents’ is in the centre. It is also the biggest and boldest font on the page.  This is different from Classic Rock’s contents page as it has the word contents in the right hand top corner and it is the second biggest font on the page, however, this makes it more convenient for the audience to find the contents page when they are flicking through the magazine.

Copy of Magazine Front Cover Some magazines use the front cover of there magazine on their contents page. Out of all of the professional music magazines I collected only Metal Hammer did this. It is placed next to the word ‘Contents’ which shows the audience what issue the contents page is from which would be helpful if the contents page image was put on the internet.