WDW Magazine Table of Contents

CODES & CONVENTIONS OF THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

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The travel magazine I chose (WDW magazine) is special since it can only be seen online through subscriptions. As of December 2018, there has not been a printed physical copy distributed. This means they can incorporate elements that print issues cannot such as hyperlinks on photos on the page that redirect you to the article they were mentioning in the picture. I, obviously, cannot add this feature into my print magazine but it is an interesting addition to a magazine that could and should be done in today's modern media. If I continue this path of creating media, I may incorporate this into those future works.

WDW magazine only has one page for the table of contents, which seems fine since they managed to pin-point which articles are the most interesting/most important to read so that they do not overwhelm their readers with too much content being piled onto two or three pages. The creators make the layout sleek and organized so that the reader can clearly see the titles and pictures of the articles. The table of contents does not highlight the cover photo (no photo credits nor page number on what the article relating to the cover photo is). In my magazine I would prefer for the cover photo/main cover line to be highlighted in the table of contents so that the audience will be able to read about what likely grabbed their attention to picking my magazine over another published piece. The creative design team also seemed to break the table of contents into thirds for each issue. The top two-thirds of the page would be dedicated to five pictures in a modern collage format that would allow for visuals as well as the title of the article and the other one-third was made to be an "Also in this issue..." piece which had no less than 10 but no more than 20 article titles with the page number. I plan to create my magazine based both around this format and something that was inspired by a cut-out from my mood board. I will consider implementing the pictures with the article title in my table of contents (but I will be adding the page number).

Not much context is given in the table of contents. They simply give the article title of what they feel is the most prevalent pieces and let the reader decide what they want to read based on the title. They entice the readers with these titles, however, and give enough thought into them that the reader will have an idea on what it would be about (December issue: "The World Famous Jungle Cruise" or "Disney Resort Round-Up"). I find that this makes sense--there shouldn't be a need to add so many words onto the page and possibly drive away the reader; a table of contents is there to inform on what page the content is on, not to tell you the whole story. Another component I noticed was that at the bottom of every issue in their table of contents that have their own logo at the bottom, like a signature. If I come up with one, I would like to add my own "signature logo" at the bottom of my table of contents.

The table of contents throughout seem to have a bright theme--the background is white, and the colors in pictures are not monochromatic, but varying. Even in the October issue, they chose not to put a darker, fall theme, and kept the bright theme. I plan to go against this WDW magazine tradition and possibly put a darker plum background to my table of contents. Since my magazine will be a Halloween issue, my overall theme will be darker and moodier. However, there are many tactics and design elements that inspired me in these issues that I will play around with in the making of my Kinetic Force magazine.

December Issue

November Issue

October Issue