Comparing 2 contents pages – Mojo and NME

Textual Analysis –

Comparing 2 contents pages in terms of design – Mojo and NME 

The two publications I have chosen to compare are a Mojo contents page and a NME contents page. It is clear from the NME contents page that it is a lot more colourful and the masthead stands out to attract reader’s attention. On the other hand the Mojo contents page looks really original and plain but has a much more interesting image compared to NME. The image for Mojo is a dominant image of Bob Dylan (Folk singer) and Muhammad Ali (Boxer), an image like this is very strange to see. They have been chosen to feature because they’re iconic; both were against the Vietnam war and had outstanding reputations. But Mojo have cleverly used this image because it’s rare to see a boxer with a singer and it will also be eye catching towards the reader. They both have 1 image each however the Mojo image looks a lot more interesting and is a classic picture that was taken many years ago taken with the greatest boxer at that time so the audience would be drawn to the image. The fact that it’s a black and white picture shows that it is significant because it’s old and a classic image that people might respect more, especially older readers who knew them at the time of their popularity. This dominant image acts as a ‘boost’ and as a ‘centre of visual interest’.                                              

Design wise, these two contents pages have some things in common including colour schemes; they both include red, black and white colour schemes. Red, white and black are effective because they are typical colours that music magazines use (Q uses red and white also). Red can be used to draw attention to topics.

The Mojo contents page makes more use of a ‘banner’ which gives basic edition information on the top of the page – it tells us the month and year and issue number. The NME contents page has the date, so provides less information. In the Mojo banner we also find reference to ‘London, Memphis, Wolverhampton’ where Ali’s head overlaps ‘Wolverhampton’. This looks like some kind of tour list. Wolverhampton makes it sound a bit humorous because it’s not as glamorous as places like London or Memphis which has a country music background.

Both contents pages have columns for text, this is convenient because it is neat and provides order to the page. The column on the Mojo contents page overlaps the image and is not transparent, they probably overlapped it because it meant it could fit on the page and cover Ali’s big black coat which didn’t look very good. The Mojo contents page uses ‘Cross Heads’ which are words used to break up large amounts of text, normally taken from the main text. These help indicate the features in the magazine. The NME contents page also uses this to present information.