Contents Page Layout Plan And Research

(click to enlarge)

This is my layout plan for the contents page that I am creating. I intend to make it look like a slight cross between a traditional contents page and a promotional poster for a festival. This I believe is a very unique and original idea, however it shall be very difficult for me to pull off successfully. Although if I am able to do what I intend to then I feel that the result will be wonderful, as well as establishing a strong connect between the magazine and various festival attendees . In order to even attempt to do such a thing I have been looking through a variety of different contents pages and festival posters.

These are a few of them:

This is contents page from a 'Glamor' magazine. It is very reflective of my intended design as it has a very large title and date at the top of the page. As well as this, I like the idea of repeating the magazine's name in the contents page so as to reinforce the brand identity. The picture of the woman used is very good as well. However I do not intend to have a single large image, instead I will have a variety of pictures all with quotes and brief summaries of their own.

My favourite feature of this contents page is the large bold text used for the different sections of the magazine (in this example they are: news, radar, reviews, live!, features). I will definitely be using a sizeable font for my section dividers.  

I love this design. It is likely that final product shall be of a similar feel to this, but have fewer pictures and feature a greater amount of featured pages. In addition to this, I do intend to place any adverts in my contents page as I believe it will waste space and give it a feeling of cheapness and a lack of professionalism.

The feature that seems most appealing to me in this magazine is the use of page numbers over the featured photographs. I intend to use this tactic in my final product but use a font and style similar to that of my front cover so as to give it a consistent feel.

I have already shown a NME contents page but I feel that this one gives a very different feel to the previous one. This has been done via the change in colour palette, difference of page heading and photographs used. The previous contents page had a very serious 'rock' music theme, but this one seems far more light-hearted and festive themed. I will need to remember that these variations can  be made, if I am ever to produce another one of these magazines.

This is a promotional poster for the 'Global Gathering' festival. Although its fonts are far to varied to be used in a contents page I particularly like how they've created the page heading. I am likely to try to replicate the feeling of this heading in my final contents page.

This is the promotional poster for the 2012 'Download' festival in Donington. As I mentioned in the example above, I am very interested in producing a title similar to those seen in festival posters.

Here is the promotional poster for the 'Wireless' festival 2013 in London. I admire how they have set out their line up sections and am likely to attempt to replicate this when creating my different sections (e.g. interviews, reviews, festivals).