Finished copy of an existing contents page

For our contents pages we copied an existing magazine cover and incorporated our own stories and themes. The layout is very messy, but is clear enough for the reader to know where things are. It looks exciting and keeps the eye moving. The organisation of the contents page connotes being a rebel or being modern, whereas a neat content page with a grid-like structure would look boring and dull.

The colour scheme of the original magazine was red and yellow, where mine is orange and blue, so I needed to change the colours slightly to match. The top banner, however, stayed red because it seemed to fit the white text and compliment the other colours well and stood out.

The original magazine contents page had an image of the front cover, so I did so too. There were lots of photos and boxes, so circled page numbers were necessary to catch the attention of the readers and to make it easy to see where each story would be found.

The contents page should be appropriate for the target audience - college students like to relax and a fun, simple contents page lets them do so without needing to think too much. There isn't much writing but the titles of the pages are brief and descriptive, and the layout is easy to understand. This type of contents page should be successful for my college magazine. I think the only downfall of this layout would be if some readers find it too much like a child's magazine (the original magazine was a kids' football magazine) so may not take the magazine seriously when combined with the bright colour scheme. I also think that the colour change between the front cover, which is mainly dark with areas of orange and blue and the contents page which is very bright may confuse readers.

I've learnt some useful skills whilst designing this contents page. I have learnt how to lay out boxes, use borders and guidelines and I've become better at using layers and effects.