Contents Page – What is a Contents Page and Planning

Music Magazine, Year 12 Coursework 
KEY TERMS:  COVERLINES, AIDA, INDEX, PAGE NUMBERS, INTEREST, INFORMATION, ENTERTAINMENT, ATTRACTION

Research and planning the layout

Make sure you do some extra research to find out what is conventional for a contents page.  Basically, it is a MENU for what appears in the rest of the magazine with page numbers for articles and regular features.

Compare and contrast some real contents pages – what do you notice that is similar among them all?  Use the real magazines in class.

Menu/Ingredients
  • Editors hello
  • Page numbers
  • Hyperbole and superlatives in headlines
  • Images and word clues
  • Graphic illustrations and designs
  • Reminder of the magazine’s name and mission statement

It will also contain some photos that relate to the listed articles / features.

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

SOME INSPIRATION

Use some of the ideas in the ‘Headline Grabbers‘ post to craft some intriguing, exciting, captivating captions and cover lines.  And see the previous blog post for coverlines for your front page.

TASKS FOR THE POST

Research, evidence and practice laying out a contents page. Then reflect on the purpose of a contents page, the technical conventions (insets, captions, index, page numbers, coverlines etc).

  1.  1 x slide of inspirational contents pages @ 8 designs – search ‘graphic design layouts for contents pages’ as actual ones are hard to find – can use any genre of magazine
  2. Hand drawn draft layouts x 4
  3. 5 x catchy headlines.
  4. Commentary and reflection Technical conventions of a contents page and an overview of the reason behind them.

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