Both: Contents Analysis: NME

Issue: 19^th March 2011

NME’s single page ‘Contents’ has a much more classic feel to it, compared to how it used to look like. It is however, still lacking certain information. One of the ways the ‘classic’ feel is produced is because of the new header. Whereas in the old style magazine, the header was a simple sans-serif bold typeface; the new style contents page’s header has a typography that is remarkably similar –if not identical- to the typography used on the masthead for The Times newspaper.  The Times is one of the more classic, upper class newspapers with an older target audience, so it is perhaps possible that NME is trying to appeal to an audience that is higher class, and older (though by no stretch is the target audience the same as The Times) than the previous NME.

The new design is also much more informative than the old one. For example, in the previous design, there wasn’t really a ‘proper’ contents page. It consisted of just one photo from one story (often one that’s never elaborated on, either) with a small bit of text describing what’s going on in the photo, and a band index informing of what bands appear in that issue (plus, in some issues, a subscription offer is included beneath the photograph). The contents page of the redesigned NME now actually looks like a contents page. The first notable thing about the new style contents page is that the 7 biggest articles (a mixture of features, regulars and reviews) are singled out with photographs and placed around the contents page, putting emphasis on them. These also have the page numbers overlaying the photo in white boxes at the bottom right of each photo. In addition to that, each story highlighted contains a pull quote from the article that sometimes makes sense (“We need ‘Angles’ to be a work of redoubtable brilliance”) and sometimes they don’t (“No shitting, no slamming doors, no sex”).  These pull quotes are in a Serif font.  Some are bold, some are italics. They do, however, bring down the tone of the magazine, to more causal and youthful. The tone of the magazine is also brought down somewhat by the tabloid-y hyperbole full writing  that is used throughout the contents page and the entire magazine.

The contents page has a lot of black lines and borders, which separate all the different columns, and also make it seem slightly more professional. There is a subscription section in the bottom right of the contents page, which is as big as one of the main stories. A subscription advertisement is placed on the contents page as it has one of the highest traffics of the entire magazine. The regular articles, are deemed less important, and are placed towards the bottom left of the page, in small text and picture-less.  The photos that are used on the contents page come from different sources. Some of them are lifted directly from the articles themselves, and were taken purely for that purpose. Some of the photos are outtakes, and some were archive photos that have been given a fresh lease of life. This ensures that they use the very best photos available to them - even if some are old archival ones – and the outtake photos seem more personal and more casual than the professional photos.

The designers of the contents page have evidently tried to vary the typography as much as possible, as there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern. Some of the headings are in a sans-serif typeface – while others are in serif one. Some are in bold, some aren’t. Some are italicised, some aren’t. Some are block capitals, others aren’t. They are also all different sizes. This has probably been done to try and make it look more artistic. The sub-headings, however, are all uniform. They are all in a sans-serif bold typeface in block capitals, and in black. If they had varied the typography of the subheadings as well, it would have just looked messy - which is probably why they kept them uniform.

Previous Design for NME.

From analysing this magazine contents page, we will take from it: The simple colour scheme; The use of black and white; the simple colour scheme; the older, classier target audience; and the neat, informative layout.