Music Magazine Research (Contents Page Deconstruction) - 'NME' Magazine

'NME' Magazine - Contents Page 

 

The title of this ‘NME’ contents page is simply ‘NME This Week’, there is no title saying ‘contents page’ which makes it in my opinion, uniquely good and original, setting it apart from the rest, it is a much more informal and friendly expression which would suit the 16-21 target audience. The ‘This Week’ gives it room for expansion into other areas, instead of limiting it to being just the contents page as it could, for example, feature small articles on what has been going on ‘this week’ in the world of music. The word NME is represented by it’s bright red, eye-catching logo which just establishes that it is part of  NME magazine. The font of the ’This week’ following the NME logo is simple, big and broad making it stand out and noticeable to readers, it also follows suit with the black, red and white NME traditional colour scheme. They have also managed to link the date of the issue in white into the broad black underlining of the tile, which creatively finishes the title off neatly. 

There is one main image on the contents page, that medium sized, centred picture is there to represent the article ’The moment that… Friendly Fires started a carnival’  it features on the page for visual affect and as a visual aid for people either browsing the page or reading the article. It also breaks up the text on the page as it is positioned in the centre, making it more appealing to read and look at. The picture acts as the focus point of the contents page and goes side by side with the article. There is a smaller image of a NME magazine cover which acts as part of the advertisement for the NME subscription located at the bottom of the page. There may be a picture relating to a small article that is actually on the contents page, but there are no pictures that may relate to and advertise the other pages featured in the contents, this would give readers a visual sneak peak at what they can expect from some of the main pages/articles and a lot of magazines do successfully use this as a way of advertising the different pages inside their magazine to the readers.

 

 

 

There appears to be one main font used in the contents page, other than the title font. The font is very minimalistic and clear either in black or white, depending on the colour of the background, this makes it ideal for NME’s target audience of around 16-21 year olds to read. The text content itself is an easy read as well as being informal, examples of the informality include the different ‘chatty style’ phrases featured in the descriptions of the different pages, this is especially suited for the target audience . These page descriptions that are under each of the page titles are very short and to the point and act as a very quick brief into what the reader can expect from that page or occasionally as a slight teaser to entice them into reading that specific page. 

The layout is simple and easy from someone to navigate around, with titles for each of the sections. Down the left hand side NME have positioned a Band Index, where readers can chronologically look through to discover what page their favourite band features on within the magazine. This is very clever as the reader may only be interested in finding out about one certain band so it saves them having to flick through the whole magazine. The Band Index is very well located within the magazine as the contents page is right at the start so when the reader opens the magazine they will be able to straight away look for the band that interests them and check out the pages in which articles or news about them features on. It is also kept separate from the other text on the page by being in a red text box on the opposite side of the page to save confusion and to break up the amount of text. The main contents is positioned as a list down the right hand side of the page and is sectioned under different categories to add to the ease of reading. NME, like lots of other magazines have chosen to use their contents page as a way of advertising their subscription, they have used the yellow font and large text to make it stand out above everything else on the page and hopefully gain some subscription customers.