Metal Hammer Summer 2014 contents page analysis

• This is the metal hammer summer 2014 contents page, we found as a group that there were about 136 pages to the magazine, with the main article, Opeth, who was also on the front cover on page 36.
• The contents page this wasn't very clear so it made it quite hard to follow as a whole, the small font made the contents page particularly confusing and hard to follow. 
• There was also, on average about 8 pages between each story, this gives the potential reader lots of information,  therefor, lot bang for your buck. 
• The entire contents page was about a story all at once due to its large amount of content. There were 13 stories featured in the contents page. We also found that there was four main sections to the magazine's contents page; hence creating large sections, which made aspects of the contents easier to read and understand. This also developed the layout for the magazine.
•  I believe that this layout matches the house style in a numerous ways, both the magazines front cover and the contents page feature dark colours such as reds and blacks, this also creates a gothic look which suggests that this is the target market; teen "goths".
•  There is also the metal hammer logo on the inside of the magazine and also an image of the main artist which in this case is Opeth. There are also seven columns of text within this magazine- the seven columns once again breaks everything down into sections and makes the magazine easier to follow so the reader can scan the text easier and follow the guidance of the magazine's contents page. 
• There are also eight images featured- although all of these are in different sets and use different artists, they all use similar dark contrasting colours which follow the house style and make everything link, ultimately this gothic house style incorporates dark images and colours. Of the seven columns, the images follow six columns. page numbers;  are large in comparison to the contents itself, larger than the actual content font itself  and in a red colour- once again linking to the house-style. 
• The semiotics of the reds and blacks create a more sinister and gothic feel- which links to the target audience of the magazine. However the magazine also follows convention due to the use of columns, images, page numbers etc.
•  The page numbers are placed on the left hand side of the column. Roughly, we believe that the size of fonts used were 20, 12 and 14, these are somewhat small for a magazine, and would make it difficult to read depending on the age of the reader. Within the contents page there is also five different types of fonts used, which makes the page more visually pleasing- these fonts are all quite gothic in appearance- using dark colours- which once again links to the house style. One of these fonts is the magazine logo aswell as the publisher web address for advertising. 
• Of the eight images used to demonstrate articles, all eight images are completely different- but all link with the house style to tie everything together. There are actually lots of dark shadows and images which all correlate to the house style of this magazine. 
• The publisher of this magazine is teamrock.co.uk, which proves that this magazine is very profitable and able to sustain large income as the publisher is not part of an institution such as Bauer and IPC for instance.

In conclusion i feel that This magazine has a specific target audience because of its house style and conventions.