Music Magazine: Contents Page Draft

I was unsure on which design I preferred so I decided to upload both and see which I preferred. After placing both drafts side by side, I decided to use the black contents page as I felt this one fitted in with my theme more. I also felt that the white contents page was a little too bland and didn't have the impact needed for this type of contents page.  The black section of the contents page on the left also appeared to be part of the main image which I liked. 

I then looked at the draft of the contents page in much larger detail. I especially liked the top section of the page, the magazine title, contents page title and slogan as I thought this was rather striking, as I intended. I believed the images were consistent and the bright red, present in the main image, went well with the theme of red, white and black. I think the fonts, Egyptian and Adventurer, worked well and I would keep these. 

I do not, however, think the numbering works well as the fact the red numbers are above the text gives the impression of 'hanging' which is not attractive. I would change this feature to improve the overall appearance of the contents page. The numbering and the text is also not straight, I would have to line this up to insure the design element is precise and does not look sloppy. Additionally, the gap between the numbering and the text needs to be widened as there is too much conflict between the numbering and the text which makes the text hard to read and therefore not efficient as the key feature of a contents page is to inform and navigate.
The main issue with this contents page is weight. The page is extremely heavy on the right hand side, with the images, text and colours compared to the left hand side which gets lost due to the large amount of black text, despite the numbering being in colour. I am going to have to balance out the page, possibly by changing the font of the article names to a different, bolder font, such as Adventurer. If this fails, or does not provide the impact needed to balance the page, I may also have to consider adding another smaller image, as shown in my forth design, in the bottom left hand corner. This would certainly improve the overall look of the page.