Contents Listing

I found some quite detailed conventions about the language used in the contents of a music magazine when I was doing my research, so I think that will be enough to help me make my own coverlines. I will look toward my collections for inspiration when coming up with them, but the main things I have to remember to be conventional is to have generally easily denoted feature names and descriptions (although I may twist this occasionally to add more ambiguity), to incorporate my magazine name in some features, to use the occasional clever cliche and to have features that are sources of diversion, surveillance and personal identity.

A very conventional thing for contents to do is to have 3 separate sections, which I worked on by creating my magazine's individual feature. I think I will just go with the common "Features" and "Regulars", because at least then I'm not completely distancing myself from a conventional contents as my layout might throw people off slightly. My 3rd section is celebrity columns, which not only helps towards this convention, but it is a major part of showing personal identity features in my magazine, where my readers can learn behaviour and values as they essentially are guides to parts of life and because of the celebrity's opinions my readers may accept their values. I don't want the title of this section to be celebrity columns, as I think it's a bit long winded and not right. I thought about columns, but it's a bit vague and although my readers will probably get it, it doesn't seem suitable. I was thinking of something like "Star Columns" but that's all a bit cheesy, but then I finally thought "C-Columns" as an abbreviation of what they are. Although I don't think it's clear what the C stands for, I think it's something that would catch on and would sort of be one of those things people don't question, but accept, plus it wouldn't be that hard to get if a reader thought about it. It also has that futuristic techy style with the single letter and hyphen.

As for the general style of my language, I'll try to keep the randomness of the cover going, but I think it need to become slightly more humorous in the contents as I really want my magazine to be very light-hearted, barely serious at all, as I believe music is such a leisurely thing. I like the style of Q's humour, like "Toploader traced. Nation breathes easy"as I think it's subtly clever and funny, so I want to try and have some bluntness and sarcasm in my own descriptions. Also, you get that laid-back feeling off Q like the guys making it have literally just bunged anything in there, the spontaneous effect so I'd like to capture that too. I also don't want to be afraid to be a bit out there, like I've done on my cover with "the original up yours to squeaky clean pop", as I feel this pop magazine needs to have some beliefs and be opinionated with a strong attitude, so this may lead me to use really blunt, get to the point language. I'll discuss my language separated up into the 3 sections they will be, as things need to be slightly different for each.

For the Features section, I decided just to have the artist's names as the feature names, as a lot of the ones I analysed did, as I felt it was the best way to put across what the feature was, as it is a solid signifier, and although levels of connotation will differ depending on the reader's opinion, it puts across simply who's in the magazine. Basically I'm just featuring most of the artists on my cover, although saved some of them for my Regulars section. For the descriptions, I tried to have a bit of fun and keep them short and blunt. I took inspiration from those I'd analysed and decided to use some rhetorical questions, some cliches and Incorporated in song names. I also used some shock language, sarcasm and recognised codes to try and impart the right vibe to my reader that my magazine's laid back, but still knows what it's doing, hopefully reflective of the reader's everyday lifestyle and therefore creating a comfortable feeling for them. Here are some examples;

• P!NK - Does she still have those stupid girls on her list? - Stupid girls was a rather opinionated P!NK song, so I felt it suitable to features, and "list" can differ in it's signified meanings, therefore a rather abstract sign, creating intrigue, but my intended reading would be in her "bad books".
• THE TING TINGS - Shut up and let them sing- Again a twist on their song title, and quite a bold statement, which adds to the attitude, suggestive of what the features about.
• THE NU RNB - Start quakin' in your boots Rihanna - A typical cliche combined with a popular artist, connotes that new feel therefore attracting readers.
• GABRIELLA CLIMI - Her silver spoon roots and living in a Volkswagen - Contrast is always an intriguing feature, so as well as this there's the Volkswagen, an infamous festival style car, which hopefully my readers will understand and not develop an aberrant reader of any other Volkswagen car.
• GRILLED CHEESE? - We kick the s**t outta cheesy pop - Blunt, shock language and very opinionated, and basically what my magazines about.

My Regulars section was more difficult, as the contents I looked at varied a lot on what sort of things they featured, some were short, some long, but main features I noticed were some sort of chart, music news (which I plan to extend with a gossip column) and reviews. I featured all these, and managed to feature "The Bolt Interview" as many magazines do. Other features I chose were "TINTERNET", expanding into the Internet side of things to keep the contemporary feel and an equivalent to Clash's "Clash Click" and "Our House", which quite a gossip magazine style feature, but I think it fits in well with pop culture and mirrors the MTV Cribs documentary.

Last was my C-Columns part, and I'd pretty much planned this when I thought about it previously. Instead of a StyleReport: CelebrityName style title, I went for just the celebrity names to emphasise what the section was about, and I thought it was more credible instead of juvenile. For the descriptions it was just more blunt language (The twitterings of a hyper homosexual) and cliches (Paints the town peach), which were hopefully quite creative and humourous, but I've got a feeling they're verging on cringey humour, but hopefully this could have a positive effect because I feel the rest of my contents is quite sophisticated, so it could act as contrast.

So that's basically the language part of my contents, oh, I also decided to mimic Spin's quote idea, with a quote from my cover star P!nk, which was suggested to me by a friend - "Without music, there'd be no party"- and I think this would be empathetic with the opinions of my mainstream readers, as instead of that serious "music is my life and I couldn't live without it" attitude, it's more of a fun-loving positive comment and a good philosophy.

Next I'll decide on my images to feature on my double page spread of a contents, and I might even be able to make them full page, but still have 2, as this way it would be conforming to my audience's opinion of 2 images, but still have that really effective impact like the Spin Duffy contents. Yay!

Contents Layout Drafts

Next in my production is the contents page so I'll start with layout drafts, as I plan on creating this through the same steps as my cover, starting with layouts, then text and image, my developed draft and final contents.

Unlike my cover, I didn't have a clear idea of what kind of contents I wanted, layout wise, so I drew tiny sketches of my considerations and asked a range of my classmates which ones they found more appealing, also asking them to give reasons. My range included 5 one page contents, 1 double page spread contents, and 1 two separate pages contents. Taking into account my target readers' opinions as well as my own thoughts about the conventions I learned from my research, I narrowed my selection down to 3 to make into bigger drafts. However, when I was doing my research I found that layouts for contents vary greatly for each magazine (or at least the ones I looked into), therefore I do have a certain amount of control of the layout of my own so maybe it would be better if it doesn't look like one already created, but still has that professional look. I'll label my layouts with the 3 sections I'm having (I'll just use Features, Regulars and Columns for now, but Columns may change when I come to decide on this) and I'll label my images as Act 1, 2 and 3 as I'm going with my audience research when they said they preferred 2 or 3 images.

Layout 1 - I tried to take inspiration from the Blender contents I liked and analysed, as it had the contemporary feel I am again aiming for to bring pop music content up to date and give it some credibility. This is a very simple layout which I think wouldn't stretch any conventions of a contents, and would be fairly run of the mill. The amount of images would hopefully appeal to my targets readers, however the block of writing may put them off, but if it does, are they really the kind of people I want to be reading my magazine? Anyway, I planning on having my list of content very spaced out to keep with that minimalistic modern feel, so it would also look very neat and hopefully have the same effect as the Clash contents had on me. Something I've decided on, is that I want to leave my images fairly unmotivated apart from the fact they are of celebrities, but I don't want to have captions on them. I want this because I want to develop that convention of the images being unusual, and I this would be even more effective because it gives an abstract element to the images, like the Blender contents which I believe worked very well. This is something I would impart on whatever layout I chose, so I may as well mention it now. But this contents is fairly safe, so maybe I need more of a shock impact to get that full sense of intrigue and contemporary-ness.

Layout 2 - This is my most unconventional layout which was really liked by those of my target audience whom I asked. It is a double page spread, which isn't very common and therefore pretty unconventional, but I have seen one. The one I saw was for a special edition and was a full stage shot looking out into the audience. Of course this was mega effective and amazing, but I considered why the same size and spread of content couldn't be used in just a normal issue of a music magazine. After I couldn't really think of a major negative effect it would have, I thought it could provoke that interest from my audience, and generally put my contents on a grander scale. It does look slightly too spaced out of this draft, but hopefully with more artful poses from my models would use the space up. Also it would leave room for any small quirky features I might include, like I was considering including cover credits as I have seen on some contents or a download code. I really like and I am starting to love the idea of doing something so different to get a shock reaction from my readers.

Layout 3 - This is again inspired by that Blender contents, but generally mixes things up a bit more than the first layout. This spreads both the text and image randomly over the page, whereas normally parts are kept together mostly on a contents. So I think by using this one, it's less safe than the first layout, but not as shocking as the second. I do like how my individual feature of columns would be separated as it really emphasises it to the reader the different part to my magazine. It fits in with how many images my readers would like to see, but again wouldn't have captions. I do think this one has quite a fresh vibe because of the text and image mixed up, so therefore develops the conventional contents, but still has a traditional feel to it.

Out of these 3 layout drafts, I'd really like to give layout 2 a try as I think it could work really well and be very individual if it worked together with everything else. I think if I receive negative feedback bad enough from it, I could revert to layout 3 if it was necessary, so will intend on creating 2, but have 3 as my back up. Before making my developed draft, similarly to my cover I will make some decisions on my language and images first.