Magazine Research Post #3a: Table of Contents Conventions

 In this blog post, I will be examining and analyzing the conventions of the table of contents in the Vogue magazine, which is a Women's Fashion magazine. For this example, I will be using Vogue September 2002, Kate Hudson Cover.

The main target audience of the vogue magazine is largely women who have an innate taste for high fashion, and especially for those who have a taste in high-end clothing that is elegant but minimalistic. Moreover, the magazine is highly prestigious in its mannerisms and content, which further appeals to people who have a taste in style and elegance within the fashion culture. 

This is reflected by the overall layout of the contents page. It is minimalistic and elegant, but concise and informational in their typography and content.  In the top of the text hierarchy, is "September Vogue". This establishes the year when the magazine was published in a stylish, but minimalistic, by which is the style that the magazine strictly and effectively follows. Next in the text hierarchy is "Fall Fashion's All-Out Glamour." This establishes the feature article, which on top of being shown on the over, also is shown in the contents page, to showcase to the reader what is in store for the article, and what special event sales or features will occur in the magazine. This entices the reader to turn the pages, will simultaneously effectively establishing, in a concise manner, what is in store for the reader the next page. Continuing on, the page numbers list the different sections of the magazine, in a relatively bigger font than the actual subtitles it is listed under and the description. This help the reader digest the information in a concise and quick manner, while avoiding a crowded and daunting contents page. Complementing the page numbers, are the titles and short descriptions of the sections under the pages. They are concise and briefly explain what will be in store for the reader. Through this, the reader can easily navigate to a page they found the most interesting or the page the want to skip towards without going through the hassle of turning pages one by one. Furthermore, the encompassing layout of the contents page is more column oriented. This further helps with navigation for the reader, while maintaining a minimalistic but ironically detailed contents page. 

Reflection

Learning how to create a contents page table of contents is absolutely pertinent when it comes to making a magazine! Learning the conventions, such as text hierarchy, layout, and design, is so important and should not be overlooked. It should be held to the same face value as the cover, even though the content page isn't what captures the reader's attention. Through this, I can further create an effective magazine that can capture the reader's focus and attention, while still being easy to navigate and read through.