“A contents page must be lucid, easy to absorb and simple enough to require no effort on anyone’s part to figure it out. Also, the contents page must appear important, underlining the inherent importance of the material covered by the publication. Furthermore, the contents page must be easy to find”

- p. 33, Designing….for Magazines by  Jan V. White

I don’t know about you guys, but I oh-so-very-rarely even glance at the contents page of a magazine, regardless of whether I’ve read the magazine before or not.

I generally just start at the beginning and work my way through the issue, sticking bright heart-shaped post-it notes on pages that catch my eye. However, Jan V. White seems to think they’re crucial aspects of editorial design, designating an entire chapter to them in her book.

So, why is a contents page important? White suggests that there are different kinds of magazine readers – those who skim, those who skip straight to the cover story and those who start at the contents page – and thus a contents page provides magazine editors with some small bit of control over how much and what content is read by a reader. On a web page, some sort of navigation seems more crucial to me than it does in a print magazine – when you can’t skip ahead to content, how else are you going to find it?? Editors design contents pages with the hopes that the reader has come to it straight from the cover.

White outlines a few different typical errors which are usually made on a contents page including too much material, overbearing slogans, too much focus on staff names and poor text grouping which results in an overly grey page (p. 36, White 1976).

The Verdict:

Given that it was my first real time reading a magazine contents page, I was surprised at how easily I was frustrated by the advertising. If I were frantically searching for an article, I must wade through at least one page of advertising between each page of the contents pages. Yes, at least one. Not to mention the 29 pages of advertising which precedes the beginning of the contents pages (!). For some who flips through the pages, for the most part enjoying the fashion spreads, this isn’t really an issue. If I were a reader who actually was after some specific information, I would have given up and put the magazine back on the shelf. Lost me at hello.

If I were to head straight to the contents from the cover, I’d probably be searching for where I can find the cover story – given that they’re the reason I opened the magazine in the first place. Luckily, Glamour lists them on the first contents page. Very user friendly (see left).

If you do manage to keep chugging through the ad pages to the next contents pages, they’re just as appealing. The categories are simple – Beauty, Fashion,Men, Love and Life, Your Health and Your Body,  (in that order, I might add) and require little (if any) brain power to decipher. There is another shameless plug to the cover Victoria Beckham story on both pages, but that is to be expected.

I particularly like the brief descriptions they provide of the article – they’re much appreciated and I’m more inclined to read the entire piece to make a connection.

Glamour combats the information overload issue by spreading their contents guide over various pages. Though, as mentioned, I was definitely deterred by the amount of ads I had to flip through before reaching the next page. I don’t mind them in amongst the editorial content, but for some reason I don’t want them lurking between my contents pages.

So, will I be reading contents pages from now on?

Probably not – old habits die hard and what not. I do appreciate the careful thought to structure and design that goes into making an appealing page. Just lose all the ads please, they’re simply in the way.

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