Contents Page Production

This was my five stage production stage of my contents page.

This was the first stage of my production of my contents page. I have created a basic layout of the page which a title, and a colour of stories to invite the audience in. The green title "Contents Page" was used on my first stages of creating my front cover. I want to see if it worked on my contents page as it didn't work well on my contents. I have elected to use the same light green background as the cover and therefore and dark green title does not work very well and therefore I may choose to go to a black title, because it doesn't stand out enough and doesn't compliment the background colour either so therefore the colours simply do not work together. Whereas a black title would contrast the light green background and therefore this will be good for the colour of my title and will catch the attentions of the audience.

I have also used a red and black colour scheme with red highlighting the celebrity name and the start of the story which will draw the attentions of the audience. This works well better on the contents page because this is useful to show which stories are separate and this therefore is useful as the job of the contents page is to give information the audience about where the news stories are within the magazine.

This is the second stage of production of my contents page. I have stuck to the light green background in order to make the other features stand out by using bold colours such as reds and blacks. The title colour has changed from dark green to black in order to stand out. The dark green wasn't a strong enough colour to stand out on the light green surface. However the new black coloured title achieves this affect much better as the black is a strong and bold colour which will stand out from the background and catch the attentions of the audience. From this the audience will be drawn in by the title then will look to the information on the page which is the column of stories.

I have also changed the colour scheme for the column of stories to an alternating colour scheme, just to see if it looks professional. It does stand out but it doesn't look right on the contents page. It looked good on the front cover but the contents page would look better with the system I used on the first draft where red signals the start of the story and then black is the rest of the story which is a system which makes it easy for the audience to identify where the stories are.

Improvements I will make within the next few stages are reverting to the colour scheme of my font from my first draft. I will leave the title the way it is as it looks better than it did before.

This is the third stage of production for my contents page. I haven't made any alterations to this apart from the addition of the image. The image is inserted and I feel the page seems like there is space left on the page and it hasn't been used. I am going to alter the layout of the page and put a column either side of the image and centralise the image and see how this works out. Doing this should make more effective use of space and cram more information onto the page.

Also, the title says "Contents page", I don't think I have ever seen a title written like that, I think that they might say "Contents" but the word "Page" would not be written as it would make the magazine look unprofessional. Therefore I will fix the problem and try to solve it by shortening the title. I will also change the the colour scheme of the column of stories.

Here is my 4th stage of production of my contents page. I have changed the layout of the page by now changing to a two column layout, laying a column either side of the centralised image. By reverting back to my previous colour scheme, the magazine looks a lot better. However, the numbers of the pages are bigger than the writing and this has altered the positioning of the writing making the page look unorganised and also makes it look like it has been put together very shabbily. Therefore, I may have to alter the position of the numbers or alter the size of the number to compensate for the problem. Also the columns don't seen like they go far enough up the page as the top of the page seems empty and perhaps adding some stories and extending the column up to the top of the page would make the contents page meet it's purpose with more success.

Also, the title being alone at the top of the page also makes the top of the page look too empty and as it is central on the page, it just doesn't look right in my opinion, therefore I may shift it to the left side of the page and perhaps introduce the sell line from my front cover. I could use the sell line as a continuous feature throughout my magazine which will introduce a sense of continuity to my magazine and this will be a good feature because the audience will be attracted to such a feature running through the magazine, and to keep them interested in the content in the magazine.

So improvement I am going to make are as follows; to move the title to the left side of the page, introduce the sell line to the top of the page, add more stories to the columns and extend them further up the page and perhaps change the colour of the numbers in order to make them stand out more as I may have to change the size or positioning of them.

This is the fifth and final stage of my production for my contents page. I have introduced the sell line to the top of the page and this has filled the top of the page, and I feel it looks a lot better and now injects the element of continuity into my magazine. This combined with the title being made smaller and aligned to the left makers the top of the contents page much better and look professional. 

 The columns have also been filled with more content which has extended them up the page and and fills the sides of the page more and doesn't leave gaps of space on the side. However, the writing overlaps the image, and despite the writing being a strong bold colour and being easily readable on the light coloured clothes of my model, the writing is slightly harder than usual to read and may distract the reader. The change in the colour of the numbers is also a positive effect as the numbers are a different feature to the text and the use of a different colour helps the number stand out and will catch the attentions of the audience.

The use of the centralised image does catch the attentions of the audience, however it does not need to be the main attention on a contents page, so this may be a slight error on my part as the audience may not want to read the contents page if the image takes attention away from the written information. However, I believe that this negative also comes with the positive that the image will also draw in attention to the columns of written text so it can be seen as both a negative or a positive, depending on how you look at it, and I believe it is a positive.