Contents Page development

Stage 1 - Setting up the layout

For the first stage of development for my contents page I first of all created my title, using the exact same typeface and font attributes as my cover, a technique I have seen in many high budget magazines. I teamed this with the brush font Levi Rebrushed which is one of my set title fonts, and contrasts greatly with the main title font as it is lower case, artistic and informal. The combination of quirky hand written fonts and bold serif fonts is another technique I have seen in other magazines, which I think is artistic and professional looking. I then created text boxes in the first column where I planned to list the content of my article, I broke these up into sections so that the contents is broken up and not too overwhelming, and created text boxes for the sub headers reading the titles of each of these sectors. I also created 3 graphics frames, the first for the main picture which is of Darrien Wright, the cover model which is the largest, also I created two graphics boxes underneath which were both the same size, filling the width of the second two columns of the page, therefore the same width as the contents list on the left. These will feature two other pictures representing two other articles in the magazine. Finally I have created smaller text boxes, which will contain page numbers for each of the articles that the images represent. I did not find this stage difficult because for structure I copied the layout of a professional magazine's contents page, I spent a lot of time looking at magazine stylistics and structures prior to development and this included contents pages, which gave me the idea to use these two fonts, which I have planned since creating my bible and flat plans.

Stage 2 - Importing Text and Images

For the second stage I imported the pictures of my model, and the two other smaller pictures that represent my other two articles and also the text and sub headers that make-up the actual contents. One of the things I struggled with sightly here was that the pose of the model is a little awkward, and for all of it to fit in the box that makes up the structure of my contents page it looks a little small, however by increasing the size I filled up more of the space, even though parts of his feet are chopped off, yet you still get the full impact of the pose. The rest of this stage of development was easy because I had a clear structure which I think made it seem easy to read and has the correct balance between looking busy and interesting and looking too crowded. The fonts I had planned to use that are part of my font pallet for branding look effective also so I had no problems here. At this stage I felt my Contents page looked really professional but lacked the colour and texture that I aim to continue throughout my magazine for branding.

Stage 3 - Adding colour and texture

For my third stage of production I added the desired colour and texture that is consistent throughout my magazine by changing the colour of 'March 2013' to blue, and used the same blue for the messy paint stripes behind my tow columns of contents. I added an extra small column of contents and made the two smaller images smaller, because I felt they were two big and distracted attention from Darrien, who was meant to be my main image. I also wanted to create stronger definition between different parts of my contents, because I felt they were all too the same and seemed to blend into one, without anything to break them up. For this reason I made the page numbers bigger and changed them into the opposite colour - white, which I felt made them stage out more, and I altered aspects of my article titles and their descriptions, making the titles upper case and bold and the descriptions regular case and normal. Making these sort of adjustments improved the appearance of my contents page a lot and refined it in terms of branding, I did not find it difficult because I created present templates for features such as the paint splatters, and I have worked with the font Fundamental Brigade (used for the main body of contents) on my front cover and experimented with it so I had a good idea of what sort of settings would work most effectively such as spacing between letters and lines, boldness, and uppercase/lowercase etc.

Although what I was doing I felt I spent a fair bit of time creating my contents page, perhaps more than I would have liked to, because I found it difficult to replicate a contents page from a professional magazine that would also be suitable for mine, because unlike cover pages where a good choice of fonts and minimalist layout, and general simplicity can make them look very professional, contents pages are very varied from magazine to magazine. Contents pages rely on images from throughout the magazine that are striking, will draw readers in, and will look good together as a collection. I was limited with my pictures however because I didn't produce a whole magazine of pictures to chose from, so I only had 3 that I felt where appropriate, and only 3 articles represent. This was okay as many contents pages have only a few images like mine, but I felt I would have been less limited and could have even perhaps created a differently laid out contents page with more images had I took the time to photograph other things representative of some of my other articles mentioned just for the sake of the contents page.