BY CARYS NORFOR

Double Page Spreads

Q Magazine Articles

A4 sized photo. The camera would've been extremely good to avoid blurring.

Traditional, times new roman – style type face. This is a serif font – showing this is aimed at a mature audience

A photo with a topless woman – therefore they have a mature audience, because in a magazine like kerrang people might say it’s inappropriate and it would probably distract some people.

Header that’s blank – to show the contents on the page, without having to recognise her picture or reading the article.

Main body of article not split up – much like a newspaper article – suitable for mature audiences.

Q also use drop caps a lot of the time, to grab the reader’s attention.

The black-white contrast with the background/text works well, making the body of the text stand out. Red works well with this, because it doesn’t make it harder to see the text, but at the same time, it makes the page look more interesting & grabs your attention.

Q Magazine Double Page Spreads

|Here are some other DPS designs of Q magazine. As you can see, to open an article, commonly, they start with either an A4 or A3 size image, to grab the reader’s attention.

This is a different type of DPS – it’s more inside the article than the other examples I’ve given.

This DPS has used a A3 sized photo, with not very contrasting text. However, the header is made very clear, with a contrasting red, and linking it to the image with white.

This page’s layout is very similar to the Lady Gaga example earlier. The header/title is slightly different, perhaps showing it’s only a one/two-page article.

NME ArticlesThis article has a different layout to the examples before; there is a main image, but, instead of having it fully on one or two pages, it’s taking up about 2/3rds on each page. Also, the same image (although it’s photo-shoped) continues onto the following page, connecting the two on more than just the colour scheme and text body.

NME have put a quote in the picture, not only to stand out and draw the attention, but, out of context, it can make readers want to read on – what was it in context with/to?

They have taken multiple images, then photo-shoped it into one, relating to the heading of the article, making an Eadweard Muybridge-type motion capture; it looks like he’s dancing.

The title of the article is a san-serif font, bold and in capitals. Because of this, it draws the attention very well; the colour is a contrast to the background, and because it’s in capitals, it has harsher edges, and is less subtle. In addition to this, the white colour links into the main photo – the frontman is wearing a white top, and black trousers. Perhaps the black trousers could be linked to the colour of the main body of text.

This letter grabs attention and relates to the image, through use of colour.

Through the use of size (of the fonts) and, sometimes colour, these pieces of text stand out, which will draw

the readers attention. Once they have read it, hopefully this will spur them to read on. There is also a good contrast of typical White & Black. This also relates to the frontman’s clothes in the main image above.

NME Double Page Spreads

As you can see, NME take a similar approach to DPS, like Q Magazine. However, I think these pictures show that they’re less eager for large bodies of text. For example, the bottom left article has one page of text – with graphics like Quotation marks splitting the text. And the top right article uses a large title to limit the text. Whereas the top left DPS is an A3 image, double page, that is probably opening an article. Still, this has a very small amount of text.

Kerrang articlesNot only is this a quote that will draw the reader’s attention, but they also use the band’s logo. These shades of blue and red stand out prominently and relates to the image well. This body of text is

split up into two small columns of text. Also, because of the big image, there is little space for lots of text, unless the text would go over the image, which, after looking at examples of Q magazine’s, we can see, looks too complex and averts the reader’s attention. Also, the white text relates to the background of the image, and also contrasts well to the black background of the text.

These little bodies of text help split the text up, making it look more exciting. Also, they grab the reader’s attention well, because they relate to the image’s colours and contrast well with the black background of the text.

This main image stands out well, against the white background they’ve put them against, and, because it’s so large, it makes the page look more relaxing, inviting and would draw younger reader’s attention more.

The annotation of the picture is normally humorous – making the page more exciting, and, because it’s funny, it would make the reader more relaxed and they would enjoy their experience of reading Kerrang more.

Kerrang reviews

The header of the article lets the audience know about the page easily and quickly. The green contrasts well with the black.

Kerrang have a quick rating system; K-KKKKK (with KKKKK being the best, and K the worst). This makes the article quick and easy to read – you can just skim-read it if you don’t have enough time, and still find out how good/bad the artist was, in Kerrang’s opinion.

This white text contrasts well with the black background, drawing the reader’s attention. In addition, the reader can know, very fast, if they want to read the article or not; you might not want to read it if it’s a band that you don’t like and they got a bad ‘K rating’.

There’s only a small body of text, with multiple images. There’s some other text, however, because that’s not the main article, it’s separated from the main body of text and is in a different colour. However, it’s still linked to the page; black, red & white are all still used in the header.

In addition, the green text stands out because there is no other green text.

Kerrang Double Page Spreads

These are some other double page spreads that I found. As you can see, Kerrang mainly use a single, A4 picture of the person in the article, then they split their text up majorly – in the Corey Taylor issue, only about 20% is actually only the article – the rest are the titles, and they’re all split up by either paragraphs or different colours.A similar technique is used on the My Chemical Romance article.

Conclusion

There is clearly a pattern emerging in Double Page Spreads. For example, many examples have a main image on one page, then the article on another. This, typically, opens an article, and the other pages are different to this.

Magazines aimed at a younger audience also avoid to have large bodies of text, and use images, graphics & bigger typefaces to split it up, and make it look like there’s less – like Kerrang & NME.