Saturday, 10 October 2015

Key Conventions of a Double Page Spread


Headline
The headline of the article typically covers around half of the first page. It is centered and at the top as it is the first place the reader’s eyes will look.  Its style is always large and bold, nearly always using capital letters. The colours are always bright and blocks. Some times symbols or images are used in the text of the headline.  The headline often uses just two fonts. One for the main text, that looks very easy to read; and a second for extra information, which is smaller and not always as clear a font. All of these features help to bring the headline out of the page and catch the reader’s attention.

By-Line
Typically taking up about a third of the first page the by-line fits at the bottom of the first page, clearly centred. The text follows the headline in style, however at a much smaller scale.  A house style is kept for the pages using the same fonts and colours. In the text some words are selected to stand out more than others, these are the key points of the article that the editor thinks will catch the reader’s attention.  They are highlighted with a different colour that contrasts from the other text colour so that they can be as bold as possible.
This section gives a brief summary of what is to come next in the article.  This gives the reader an idea of what is next and can entice the reader to read something they wouldn’t normally read and stops them skipping over. The summary uses language techniques and punctuation to help emphasise how interesting the article is.  For example the articles use a lot of commas for lists and ellipses for emphasise.
The by-line also shows the date and writer of the article, as well as giving the reader a summary of  the article

Central Image
The image is always linked to the article of the double page spread.  This normally ends up being an image of the music artist or band that the double page spread is about.  The image normally shows the group/artist performing from a recent event or tour; this always links to an aspect of the article later on. The image always covers at least the entirety first page and often clips onto the second page. The background colour of the image usually merges over to be the background of areas that have no image. Bleeds were clearly used as the images always cover the entire page with no white borders.

Quotes
The double page spread has a few quotes taken from the following interview of the article.  This, like the by-line, gives a little preview of the article but gives it a more personal feel, as they know that is a quote from someone.  Quotes are very clear to spot from over features of the double page spread.  They are recognisable from the quotation marks, name afterwards and the differing font and size compared to the article.  Some quotes are on the central image in corners, but some are imbedded into the article.  They are always larger that the normal text and show in a different style font.  They help to break up the article so that it is easier to read and flows well.

Page Numbers
The double page spread always has the numbers in the bottom outmost corners. Following the rest of the magazines style for page numbers.

Articles
All article seemed to have an average of 2/3 columns of text.  The articles were split into short paragraphs, with clear headings to separate them all.  The headings were often questions as the article was a question and answer format.  The headings were differentiated by change in colour and scale of the font, sometimes the font its self changed.  Normally the first paragraph of the article uses a drop cap, which is bold and stands out very clearly.


No comments:

Post a Comment