Annotation of 3 Double Page Spreads

I found these 3 double page spread's and thought they were all different and interesting in different ways. 2 of these double page spreads are from NME (the top 2 - Lily Allen and The Teenagers) and the other is from Vogue ('Go Gaga'). I like the first NME one (The Teenagers), but at the same time its not something i want to go for when doing my double page spread. I like how there is one large image that looks like it would be covering one A4 page, but then it seems the other page on the DPS is very full and has too much on it - i think it would have looked much better if they had just had the story/article on the other side instead of trying to cram in the 'everyones talking about' bit. However, I do quite like the way its been set out, with the block coloured boxes (The Blue colour being very bold and stands out nicely - as well as creating a contrast). However - i do think there is too much over the pages, and the DPS should have just had the image, a title, pull quotes and the article (instead of going over board and adding 'profiles' and 'everyones talking about' bits), even though this means that the page may have had alot of white left on the page, i think that this would look very effective because i think large areas of white look chic, as apose to filling up the page and making it look trashy.

I think this is why i like the Gaga Vogue cover so much. I think everything about it works beautifully - the image, the contrasting fonts, the colour scheme, etc. Everything in this DPS has been worked together so well, even the outfit that Gaga is wearing. I love how large the title is, which really emphasizes the picture next to it. Also, i love how under the title is a small block of italic (contrasting the bold title) text. The Image of Gaga is full of nude/neutral tones which i think looks so lovely because the page looks empty - and yet full. Also, i think the small article looks quite nice under the title because it doesnt draw to much attention away from the image and doesnt look to 'scary' to the reader (Sometimes readers go against reading articles with large amounts of text just from looking at it... Well, i do). However, because i've already written my interview with Gaga i know that the article won't look as short as this one on the page - However its not a very large article, so its encouraging when i see covers like this Vogue one that have a small amount of text, but a main focus on the image, because this is what i'm going to aim to do.

So, when i think about my layout of my DPS i think it may end up looking something like the NME double page spread of Lily Allen. I love the way that (Like the Vogue one) the title and image are the larger things on the page, and therefore are more of a focus - which would then draw in readers and make them want to read the article (which isn't shockingly big, but isn't as short as the gaga one). I'm not a huge fan of the composition itself within this article, I don't like the whole '80's punk' vibe that NME are trying to create, with the stencil like font and Lily Allens tartan shirt and scruffy black hair. But, the point about this article is that it follows the same idea that i want to do (Making the image/title quite large, with a small bit of text and only a few pull quotes).

Doing this research has really helped me and influenced my ideas for my Double page spread. I now know that i definatly want to go for a large image and title because i've seen they work so well, Like in NME with Lily Allen, But i want to go the classiness and chic ideas that Vogue have incorportated with Gaga's DPS.