FOLLOWING AND CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS:

CONTENTS PAGE

TITLES One convention of contents pages is the title as it is normally the first thing you notice as you open up the contents page. I have gathered some “Contents” titles from Mixmag and Billboard magazine to compare it to my magazine. Billboard and Mixmag have a similar font style as it is quite bold and noticeable with huge sizes which is normally similar to the masthead or company logo. I followed this convention as it is good to look at as you are able to see it clearly and following the same font type as my masthead on the front cover but I challenged this as I put the title a different font type as my masthead because I didn’t want it to be too bold for it to cover most of the contents page.

ARTICLESAs you can see, I have researched the magazines contents page of Billboard and also Mixmag. Content articles are normally listed in columns chronologically with page number references to each one. From the examples, I have chosen the style of Mixmag as you can easily see the articles and what they are about underneath and gives good effect as the colour scheme goes with the background.

I have followed this convention as I thought it would be a great idea for the UV light effect of green to go against the background colour of black and I thought it works well. However, I have challenged this convention as I have separated it into 2 different columns and subheadings with one column on different artists and one about places and what to do around the world as it is the ultimate magazine guide to clubbing.

SUBHEADINGSFrom conducting my research, another convention of contents pages are separating different articles into different categories. Examples from Billboard and Mixmag show that in different issues they separate about what they are going to be talking about depending on which stories seem more exciting than others.

I have chosen 2 subheadings for my contents page as I thought that having 13 pages worth of content would be enough for my magazine at this early stage with competitions, around the world tours, artists interviews etc. I liked the look of other contents page with bold style writing and bright colours showing that it is easy to read as well as the content underneath the subheadings. I therefore decided to follow the conventions of my own work by using the same fonts as my front cover for continuity.

ISSUE DATESThe issue date or number is normally repeated on each of the contents page the magazine produces. They are usually near the logo and are in a small font on the left hand top corner. I followed this conventions shown here by Billboard magazine and Mixmag magazine. However, Billboard have their issue date on the bottom right hand corner next to the barcode which means that you would hardly see it which I therefore changed this convention for it to be the middle way between the logo and the title of the contents page because I tried to follow examples from Mixmag mainly as most of their issue dates are designed to stand out and that is what I tried to do.

IMAGESWhen researching existing products, I found that mainly all magazines used other images apart from their main artists in their contents page. Mixmag however, didn’t really have other images apart from the iconic one except from an advertisement image of something they can purchase. I challenged this as I thought I needed to put some more pictures of other artists on so that it doesn’t make the magazine look cheesy and just about one person where I added photos of a concert which I went too. Billboard use a variety of different artists who are placed on the contents to show versatility and excitement of other people being on the page. I chose to use one larger image for my main story to show it is recognisable as it is the main selling point of the product.