Table Of Contents Analysis

 

Overview

A table of contents is a page at the beginning of a magazine that shows articles in the magazine and feature stories along with the page number that corresponds with them. It helps readers navigate through the magazine without getting lost. It enhances the reading experience and keeps the reader's attention for longer.

It can show the scope of the entire magazine in just a few pages. The table of contents can do this by displaying topics, articles, feature stories and showing the hierarchy of things in the magazine. For example, you may see a section called "Easy Recipes" first, and then under you'll see a subsection or articles with the recipe in it. Essentially, it emphasizes the priorities and the content that is shown to the audience.

My magazine will be around 85-95 pages

Real Simple Magazine

Layout & Structure

- Multiple. columns that separates each departments and makes navigating the table of contents easier.

Fonts & Typography

- Bold headings and smaller subsections to establish the hierarchy between the departments and the articles.

Use of Color & Whitespace

-Very minimal colors on the table of contents. Uses warm colors on the images.

Image Placement & Hierarchy

- Images are placed in the left side of the page to grab attention to features stories that the images represent. 

- Uses simple headlines "What to Cook" "How We live" "How to do things" etc... A lot of the terminology they use is informal, but it does fit with the magazine due to it feeling comfortable and approachable. There is 5 departments listed. "Stuff we love", "How to do things", "How we live", "what to cook", "on the cover". The content emphasizes quick content and includes a lot of short reads, ideas, and tips to help the reader. They due include feature stories, but they do not take away from the lifestyle brand.

Taste Of The South Magazine

Layout & Structure

- Uses a grid like format that distinguishes the feature content (represented in the images) from the other departments.

Fonts & Typography

- Larger headings to convey hierarchy to specific articles (feature stories). While other smaller fonts show the "less important" articles on the hierarchy scale. But still maintains that readability and visibility.

Use of Color & Whitespace

- Soft colors which help repeat that feeling of "comfort food" that the cover page establishes. We see white space between images and around the text to keep that clean look.

Image Placement & Hierarchy

Large pictures in the center of the page to establiush that dominance and grab the attention from the viewer. The shows smaller images underneath to represent secondary content on this image hierarchy scale.

The headings and headline uses friendly and conversational language. For instance, we see the "Chip, CHip, Hooray!" This isn't the conventional formal tone that we usually see throughout a lot of magazine which gives the readers that welcoming and conversational tone. Looking through, we can count a total of 11 departments listed and 4 feature stories listed that are clearly stated in the picture. This magazine emphasizes quick, repeatable content rather than that deep storytelling format. Which I am starting to recognize we rarely see this form of emphasization in food magazines.

delish High Protein Magazine

Layout & Structure

- we a layout where the table of context is split in half. Where we see all fo ther info on the right hand side of the right page, and on the left hand side of the right page, we also see a quarter of the image whereas the rest of it is shown on the left page.

Fonts & Typography

- we see a bold headline at the top "Cook This Issue" and much smaller body text underneath which pushes the reader to read much faster compared to the other articles.

Use of Color & Whitespace

- Whitespace is rarely used as we see the only white space in the text on the bottom left

Image Placement & Hierarchy

- A very large photo that takes up the entire page which may push towards the theme and formatting of this magazine as now we see two pages (cover and this one) that are entirely covered by food images. 

The language that we see in headlines are very energetic and gym focused. ("Rise & Grind", "Fuel Up", "Power Plates") And we see 7 departments listed and no feature stories listed on the cover. This magazine focus a lot on short form, repeatable content rather than that deep storytelling.

Analysis of All 3 Magazines

Common conventions that I've noticed across all three is that they all use short form content rather than that deep storytelling. And this is something I plan to challenge. I want my magazine to have deep story telling throughout the pages. Meaning I plan to do deep research about the dishes I'm creating and make sure to inform the reader of the historic background of the dishes. A convention I want to emulate is the the food heavy content on the table of contents. For instance, I really enjoy the second table of contents where we see more food than white space.