Contents Page Evaluation

Evaluation

For one of my preliminary tasks I was asked to create a contents page for a magazine for Aquinas College, and in creating this I used as many conventions as I could from my previous research to make it as good as possible.

First of all the title of the page ‘Contents’ is the biggest piece of text on the page; I did this so the reader can easily find the contents page if they’re flicking through the magazine. It also follows the same design as the front cover title, thus following the house style. I placed it at the top as this is probably the best place for titles as they can easily be seen.

Now, as for the images, I used the same background for all of them as I felt it looked tidier and has a connotation of professionalism to it, and nothing really takes the spotlight away from anything else, only the size and positioning does that. The main image, the one linked to the main story, is the largest and positioned in the center to show its importance which also makes it the most eye catching. The other two then link with the two stories on front cover, but with different pictures. Each image is accompanied by a caption which explains the story in more detail, just enough to make you want to find that page and read more about it. Each picture also has a page number overlaying on top of it; this makes it really easy to find the page this story is on.

In my editor’s letter I tried to be really friendly to the reader to break the barrier between editor and reader, but then also be quite formal as I didn’t have much room to write in so it had to be quite to the point. To finish off my editor’s letter I ended by signing my name off, this lets the readers know who the editor is and adds a friendly feel to it again. And then I put a picture of the editor at the bottom just to let the audience know what he looks like, and he’s doing a thinking pose giving him the status of being smart and thoughtful.

Finally, I gave the features column a whole side to itself being as though it has a lot of information in it. For each story I put a red page number in front of it which contrasted with the white and black text making it easily noticeable, and then after the page number would be the title of the article then a short description of the story, much shorter than that of the main and secondary stories.

Throughout both the front cover and the contents page I kept with a slight cartoon theme, by putting black borders around a lot of things, and by overlaying cartoonish things over pictures of real people (e.g. the thought bubble with the twitter logo in it). This gives the magazine a comic kind of feel, and is perfect for the target audience of college students (aged 16-18).

Overall I feel as though I did a good job with my contents page as it links in with and has the same house style as the front cover, like you could see these two pieces being part of the same magazine. I really like the clean and tidy layout too, it makes everything easy to find and pick out. If I could change something it would be to add more stories into the features section and mention the iPhone competition with an added picture of it.