Table of Contents

Task: Pick up a book. Actually, pick up a lot of books and magazines too. Browse the table of contents in all the books and magazines you can find around your house or at the library.

These tasks and examples are from "Daily Goals" posted in the DTP Classroom forum in connection with the Never Stop Learning Plan for 2003. They are presented here in a dual role as exercises for learning design and brainstorming material for developing new designs.

More Brainstorming & Analysis Exercises

Examples/Discussion: Have you ever really studied the layout of a Table of Contents? If not, do it. If you have, dig deeper!

You can learn a lot about a publication's contents just by skimming the TOC. How much detail is included? Does it have just main chapters/articles or are sub-sections broken out with titles, descriptions, page numbers? Is it tiny text or big and bold? B&W or color? Are there leaders between the titles and page numbers? Is it set in one column or multiple columns.

How does the "typical" TOC in a book differ from the TOC in a magazine? Many of the magazines I read have very lively Contents pages with pictures, multiple columns, multiple fonts, and often don't follow the order the material appears in the publication - they are often arranged with the "lead" stories first or by "departments" within the magazine.

Compare the look and feel of the TOC with the look and feel of the rest of the book or magazine. Do they work well together?

Discuss It!

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This document is part of these Desktop Publishing learning tracks • How a Desktop Published Document is Created  ~ Document Setup  ~ Text > Composition • Never Stop Learning Plan  ~ Daily Goals > February • Brainstorming & Analysis Exercises  ~ Text and Fonts