Contents Analysis - Blender Magazine

This is the contents from the June 2008 issue of Blender, a music magazine I don't normally look at because I think it's target readers are mainly male as it's often known for it's steamy pictures of female celebrities. However when looking for contents to analyse, I found this and thought it was again unconventional like the Spin one, but I also noticed how it wasn't something I expected from a magazine like Blender. Although the text is slightly unreadable, I think I can get the jist and it was more for the layout I wanted to look at this contents.

Though I can make out the feature names, the descriptions are a bit too illegible, but using the Blender archives it makes it marginally more clear what they're talking about.

Similar to Clash, this contents just has a plain and simple "Contents" title , which I personally think is better after seeing Q contents, so it's probably something I'll do as I consider it to be in between having no title at all (like Spin) and having NameContents (like Q).

This is similarly separated into "Regulars" and "The Guide", however I don't think it features all of the magazine's content, which I'm not sure is the case with the other conents but here it seems quite obvious, so maybe they've just picked the best to avoid the contents looking cluttered and less appealing. But something which is cleverly done, the features and regulars are normally separated on a normal contents, but here they've been combined, as different artists take part in a similar style feature each issue which I think may appeal to their target readers as they may often think "Oh, why couldn't they have done that feature on so-and-so", but this way that doesn't happen if the artists a just interchanged, if you catch my drift?

All the features are generally pretty direct, with the odd pretty abiguous one like "Station to Station" where Madonna is the artists in this regular, but I think Blender have an effective way of lisiting there features. They aren't totally ambiguous, but generally easy to denote and are those clever kind of titles which aren't just the name of the artist but are like "Collect Call From --Artist" and "Dear Superstar : Artist", where the artist's name is combined with some sort of cliche, which I think reflects the way features and regulars are combined. I like this style and hopefully it's something I could use without it being too cheesy.

Again the features are just for diversion, with the many interview style features and maybe for personal identity with the features like "Blender Bible", which is very similar to the "10 commandments" feature in Q. I think this convention is something I knew already and just accepted.

Also, a small quirky feature is the artist index, aimed to make it easy for the reader to see what things they'll be interested in - no fussing over stuff they've never even heard of just to find something about an artist they'll be interested in. Although this may be useful for all readers, it is something that suggest the target readers are predominantly male, as I think females are more open to just flicking through, whereas males will probably just want everything simple laid out for them.

Like the Spin contents, this contents is very image orientated, with the images taking over half of the page. I think they're laid out quite artistically and so are very effective at evoking interest in the features. This is also because of the bright colours and unusual stances, which I think looks like a convention for contents, that the images need to be something a bit different which are fairly unmotivated and abstract to encourage the readers to look at them. This is done well here as I have no idea what's happening in any of the images, however that might just be the way I'm reading them because of my knowledge and circumstances, so they may make more sense to a usual reader or to an American who has more knowledge or the artists featured.

Again fonts are what I expected, a slightly more interesting font for the titles, very plain font for the descriptions.

The way the colours are used is very similar to that of Clash, where there's black on white mostly, but then for the page numbers and titles the brightest colour from the images is used. In Clash, this is more obvious because of the muted colour images, but here becuase of the numerous bright colours in the images, it allows the whole contents to be drawn together subtly, while still looking quite organised and neat.

I really like this contents as I think it's very contemporary, with the way the images are laid out and the futuristic representation of the date which I absolutely love. But it took awhile for it to sink in that this was from Blender, as it looks to me like it should be from one of the trendy indie scene mags, but maybe it's because I'm not part of the target audience that I've took an aberrant reading or decoded it differently. But I thought because Blender normally features quite mainstream acts and dabbles in a bit of everything, I was part of the target audience. It does also have to be accounted for that it's an American magazine, and I'm British so more used to the British representation of things, but I think that's a pretty lame excuse really because we are heavily influenced by American sitcoms etc. But it's a style I'd consider doing, and seems credible but interesting.