We present ten excellent magazine design suggestions for bringing life to your next print design, from developing eye-catching, imaginative magazine covers to putting together inside pages that pack a punch.
A magazine’s design is not an easy undertaking. However, you’ll find something here to help start your thoughts rolling, as well as helpful technical pointers for making your magazine layouts appear incredibly professional, whether you’re creating a fashion bible, fitness magazine, or gastronomic flick-through.
Don’t be timid when creating cover designs.
The cover is one of the fundamentals of magazine design. The magazines with the best bodies always have the best aesthetics. Spending effort crafting your magazine’s interior pages is useless if readers don’t pick it up to look inside. For readers to buy your magazine and be enticed to learn more about it, you must have an eye-catching magazine cover design.
The design of your magazine cover doesn’t have to be garish. A layout with too many colors and a rainbow of headers can come off as old and unprofessional, but balanced, powerful titles and sub-headings with specific graphic callouts draw attention to stunning magazine covers in a more understated way.
The loudest shout comes from a single color splash!
One of the most straightforward magazine tips is this one. A simple splash of vibrant color can be more stunning than a palette of rainbow brights, as evidenced by some of the most influential magazine designs, which demonstrate how color can be used very little.
For men’s periodicals and technical books, combining a single vibrant color with black-and-white photos and monochrome typography looks terrific. Using bold font, banners, and dividers gives layouts a sporty, muscular edge. It’s easy to accomplish and a fantastic approach to tying the magazine’s overall design together (see Tip 9 below, about promoting a style theme in your designs).
Take the time to make your content page perfect.
As you learn how to construct a magazine spread, pay close attention to this. The contents page will be the reader’s first stop after they open the magazine. The contents page should be helpful and make it simple for the reader to locate sections and articles, but it’s also the ideal spot to use a bit of stylistic imagination.
If your magazine spread contains a lot of substance, branch out into a total two-page distance instead of keeping it to one page. This will give you plenty of space to introduce a sizable “Contents” header (consider using a slab serif for high-impact typography) and a tonne of captivating photos.