“Do not judge a book by its cover” might be a nice concept, but it is certainly not the case in magazines and the publishing world. Your magazine cover is the first and usually the most important impression you give to the readers. Readers tend to judge magazines by their covers all the time and decide whether to probe deeper or not. Therefore, effort and consideration are required to ensure your magazine gets the impression it deserves.
What makes a good magazine front cover can be a designer’s dream or a nightmare; depending on the way you take hold of it. The world of print media may not have much to offer in this age of digitization, but the magazine cover carries on offering a wealth of takeaways for all sorts of designers – packaging designers and web designers particularly.
Creating a magazine cover could be tricky for some as there are many different approaches. An effectual magazine cover includes many different elements, and the demand lies in making all of them play like a fine-tuned orchestra. There are enough restraints to give you a structure – a pre-defined space of 11 by 8 inches or so – but beyond that, it is you who arrange all the other relevant illustrations such as text, graphics, or photographs, and top your magazine game.
Your only mission is to reveal the content in a way that makes the magazine jump off the shelf, and we are here to help you succeed in your mission. With easy steps and a few tips and tricks, we will guide you on how to make the best magazine cover design.
Text placement and color
The basis of most magazine covers these days is either a picture or an illustration. Either way, an appealing image should have good contrast between dark and light regions. Obviously, to make the text readable, it must be dark set against a light background or vice versa.
A big part of magazine cover design is finding an appropriate spot for the text. Any skilled designer knows that selecting color for your magazine cover is never random. Common approaches are to either complement or match certain vivid areas of the image or illustration beneath. Black and white are usually solid choices for subtitles or smaller pieces of text, but a magazine cover is bigger, and bolder text elements are a great option to inject some serious colors.
The most important part of the magazine cover design is to make it appealing while making everything clear and easy to understand. This task may seem very simple, however, designers can have a hard time actually accomplishing it. Thus, to make it effortless, you can design a magazine cover on PosterMyWall without any difficulties. This magazine cover maker makes it super easy to design a magazine cover without even having expert designer skills.
Use 3D text behind and in front of image
Although the magazine cover seems to be literally flat, that does not mean that all the elements in it must share a single plane. In fact, a common approach is to place an illustration or a photograph, so it obscures some text partly while appearing behind other text.
The idea is to layer up so that there is a balance between typography and images. Layering your magazine cover as you design it allows you to move elements back and forth within the page easily. It is a simple formula that can help you a lot while working on the cover.
Place emphasis with backgrounds and fonts
One of the main attributes of the magazine cover is to sell the stories inside. This is often accomplished by mentioning a lot of short teaser lines floating on the cover page. The more teasers there are, the more ways a designer should have to drive the reader’s attention to each – especially in popular magazines as they typically go for a louder approach.
The most obvious technique is to play with different fonts as well as bold and italics to emphasize the teasers. From there, you can also get fancy and introduce colored or shaped backgrounds. The purpose is to make things prominent, thus, make sure to implement it as necessary. Excess implementation can also make the cover design messed up, making it difficult for the readers to understand.
Combine illustrations with photography
A combination of photographs and illustrations is often a great wat to make your magazine cover design stand out. Although a less common approach, it is possible to pull off a cover with just illustrations and photographs.
It might not be the easiest way to design a cover magazine initially, as the key to this approach is a good color and a unique style. But do not worry, there is always a trouble-free way to do things. Just choose to design a magazine cover with the magazine cover templates on PosterMyWall, have a unique and attractive outline for your cover design, add your stuff on it and your magazine cover is ready to go.
Spice up the boring stuff
Although perhaps designers are not too much interested in such elements, they do need to be placed nonetheless. Most magazine covers take a hands-off approach, leaving the elements such as barcodes and price tags in a conventional spot somewhere in the corner. However, a creative magazine cover always has a unique place for them, making them incredible design elements in themselves.
Consistency is key
Magazines are usually coming out every other week or month, hence the cover needs to be designed every week or month as well. However, all your magazine cover designs should have something in common. Every cover you design should have a center point; it could be a model or celebrity on your cover page, or the headline of your brand’s name. Something on the magazine cover design should be catchy and consistent so that your readers can identify you in the blink of an eye. This can also help your magazine establish a brand image in the long run.
What needs to be understood is the difference between consistency and repetency. This means that the overall layout and feel remain more or less constant within your magazine covers. With repentance, customers may falsely develop the idea of the new edition being the old one and not purchase it.
Wrapping it up
Designing a magazine cover may seem simple at first, but it is a pretty challenging task. It typically starts from the sketch with the layout modifying gradually, perhaps not in a dramatic way.
While all the mentioned strategies provide you plenty of room to get creative, it is ultimately essential to remember that every regular publication requires some degree of consistency, in order to keep the branding intact. Consequently, do not get carried away, follow the guide above, and take your magazine cover designing to a different level.
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