Constructing the Contents Page

Now I have all of the images ready, I can begin constructing my contents page.

Step One -

First I laid out the back ground vectors, and established which colours they were going to be, so I could establish a consistent house style. I had also already decided that I wanted the contents page to be a double page, as they use this style in Q magazine, and I thought it allowed more room to display everything.


Step 2 -

Next I added the title, and the issue number and date. I did this as it is general convention of music magazine contents pages. Also I used the same fonts that I had used on the front cover (house style) I also found that typically the title is placed in the top left hand corner, so that's how I decided where to place mine.


Step 3 -

Next in the top right hand corner I added the Acapella logo, as this is also another convention that I found when analysing real music magazine. It creates a brand rather than just a magazine and allows the magazine to be more recognisable.


Step 4 -

After that I added the images. I wanted to place the images first so I knew where I could place the text and how to size it correctly. I think having the one main image then the four smaller ones, establishes that the person in the main image is more well known than musicians in the other images.


Step 5 -

Next I added the titles, I used the same font as the coverlines on the front cover (house style) and I highlighted them using the pink colour to make sure they stand out as the titles.


Step 6 -

As you can see I then added the articles and their page numbers. I used the same font as the one I had used for the title. I also decided to highlight the musicians in blue to make them stand out, so that when the readers are looking through the contents they will be able to see quickly if there are people they recognise featured in the magazine.


Step 7 -

The next step included me adding the corresponding page numbers to the images, this is another convention used by real media products, as it again makes it easy for readers to recognise musicians featured in the magazine, and locate the page the articles are on.


Step 8 -

Next I added the "This Week" section,  in which a small over sight of the magazine is written, so that readers can get a sense of what the weeks issue is all about. Again I used the same fonts as the front cover and other content on the contents page. I decided to add drop shadows on the boxes to make the page look a bit more three dimensional.

Step 9 -

Next I added the "Connect with us" section, in which social networking links are provided so that readers know where to go to look for extra content etc. I used the icons for the sites to make them more recognisable and stand out. 

Step 10 -

Finally I added pagination in the bottom left and right hand corners as this is another typical convention, as it allows reader to locate the pages they need to access to read the content that they are interested in.