The Contents Section

In this post I'm going to look at the contents sections of newspaper and explain why I've challenged the codes and conventions.

As you can see from these examples there is usually a box on the page that includes the contents of the page, they will usually show you a few of the stories that are included in the newspaper. They're large and take up quite a bit of the room. The contents also includes pictures and the story lines from sections of the newspaper.

These are a few examples from numerous local newspapers.

However, instead of a contents section, I've chosen to use a bar style for my contents, as after talking to my focus group they told me that they find the contents sections incredibly useful, especially when they just want to flick quickly to a specific section. Although, they said that they'd prefer the second page to have more news then a contents box being there. They also mentioned that after having the main headlines of sections on the front page, they don't see why they also have to be shown again on the second page, once again, taking up more room. Therefore, to reduce the room taken up I've placed my contents into a bar design at the top of my second page, which gives you the names of the sections and the page numbers that they'll be on. This gives the audience the use of the contents section, yet takes up a lot less room, leaving room for the news.

This is what my contents bar will look like...

This contents bar will reach all the way across the top of my second page, although the size isn't shown here.