Kerrang magazine contents analysis

Kerrang contents analysis 

The contents page of this Kerrang magazine has a very confusing layout, you don’t know where to look first. Even though you don’t know where to look first the layout is actually a good layout, its clear to where all the articles and features are and the images help to know what you will find when looking at that article/feature. At the top of the contents page you will find three images of things that will be in features or articles in this magazine, which is helpful to the audience to know even more what the article will look like and what bands/artist will feature in it, so if the audience like them bands/artist then they will flick to that page to see what the article/feature is talking about. There is an image of ‘Rob Zombie’ at the top right hand side of the contents page that takes up most of the page, this will attract the audience eye straight away to the image and will want to read about the band, because they will want to know more about the image and why it is so important that it takes up a lot of the page. The contents page is set of in groups, which you have a few images at the top of the page, and then you have a banner for the title of the magazine and ‘This Week’, and section for the editorial and the last section for the features and articles in the magazine and page numbers so the audience can go straight to that page. On the contents page there is also in the bottom right corner a advertisement for subscription of the magazine, which is a great place to put an advertisement because the contents page is the place where the reader first looks and sees what is in the magazine.

The editorial on the contents page has direct mode of address because it is addressing the audience as if they were their friends. Even though the editorial is on the contents page, the reader doesn’t have to read it. The editor talks about the articles in the magazine in his own words, so that the readers can learn more about those articles. The image of ‘Rob Zombie’ has been made bigger compared to the other images because it emphasises the genre of the magazine and they want the readers to see them first. When looking at the image you can see that its of the band on stage on tour, which the audience would want to see the band on their natural state on stage.

The articles and features are in capitals, this helps to emphasise the articles and text and make them stand out more to the rest of the writing. This makes the text easier to read, rather than having the text in small font. The information on the articles is in a smaller font compared to the actual article, this helps the readers to see the article or feature, and if they want to read what it is about then they can look underneath and see the information on it.

The colour scheme of the contents page is yellow, white, red and black, which is the same throughout this magazine issue. All of the important things that the editors want the readers to see first is highlighted in yellow, this makes them standout more. The only things that are in white is the magazine name and the issue number and the date that the magazine came out, this is because they are always on the contents page, so they get their own colour to connote this. The red is used for the page numbers, this is to make them stand out so that the readers know where to go to read that article/feature.

The main focus of the contents page is the music, this links with the interest of the target audience, this means that the editors are acknowledging what the target audience want to read about and the interests that the audience has. The language of the article is suitable for the target audience, its easy to understand and it has no technical words that could confuse the reader. The layout of the contents  is simple in a way that has two sections, but can also be confusing on not knowing where to look first when you flick to that page.
I like the way that this contents page has been set out, because I don’t read music magazines the contents pages are very different when compared to the kinds of magazines I read, but the layout, the colour scheme, and the images all help with the genre of this magazine.