"Magazine Design/Layout Tips"

 To have a successful magazine, the layout and design of it should be aesthetically pleasing to the viewer, causing them to actually go through the magazine and see what its contents are. The layout of a magazine can determine what the author's formality or experience is. This blog will help you go through the tips to make you reach your full potential as a graphic designer and author of a magazine.

1. Pay attention to the cover

While most people say the slogan "don't judge a book by its cover", in magazines, your audience will judge the cover more than you think. The cover works as a person's attention grabber and should not be underestimated. This is the first thing someone sees is the cover, so you should give as much effort to it like everything else in your magazine. Take this sample magazine cover on the left; both the text and the picture contribute to hooking the audience to see what is inside the magazine. Showing one of the greatest players in the sport and also showing " winning the french", shows the audience some reason to open the magazine and see what its contents are. The text can also be played around with, having the image behind or in front of the image. The key point to take away is to have a good cover.

                             2. Focus on the Fonts

The fonts of the magazine also matter a lot; on the cover and inside the magazine itself. Over here, we see an example of an extravagant font being used, and we see a type of mix between the script font and the sans-serif font. These fonts mixing attributes can mix happiness, modernness, and enjoyment, which can depict what emotion you are trying to provoke from your audience, and can give them a kind of reassuring factor into knowing that you know what you have to say. For example, over here, without looking closely at the font and analyzing it, we see that this reads " 10 years of sport". This shows that they are proud of the achievement and are in a celebrating mood. Now, we see that the fonts are provoking happiness, therefore matching up with what the author was trying to say. This is just a small-scale example of how your font can affect how people view you as a person in general and what you are trying to say.  

3. Use Pull Quotes (if needed)

Pull quotes can aid an author most wonderfully if used at the right place and the right time. Pull quotes, in general, are quotes(or statements) used in a magazine's layout to help make the author have a big impact on the readers and quickly get information across. Pull quotes are naturally hard to ignore, and if in the middle of someone's reading, is probably going to gain their recognization. As an example, the short excerpt on the right is an article saying that we are blessed to have peas and that they taste really good. The pull quote summarises and prepares the reader to shows that this article is going to be admiring peas and showing that they can bring people pleasure. This is one of the most effective tips you can use in your writing to get the message across properly to your reader.

   4. Make use of white space

White space may seem like a beginner's tip, but it can be of more help than one may think at first. White space can give the reader a more aesthetically pleasing view and a more modern view of what you may be presenting. Not everything you have to do should be filled in with words that the reader might not even read or care for. Sometimes, leaving spaces white can be less of wasted space, and more of a sense of simplicity.

5. Insert Pictures; it might help

Pictures can help a great deal when it comes to getting your background knowledge across. Pictures can show the audience basically a visual of what you are writing about, and can also help animate it in their mind. A great example could be right here, on the right, a person has two different photos of herself, showing that the article has something to do with her, can be about her entirely. This can help your audience not get overwhelmed with only text and can provide them with something visual to help them understand what you are saying more. SO, as stated, photos can be a great help for your audience's understanding.

6. Age-Appropriate pictures 

One important thing to keep in mind when you are writing a magazine for. This includes their age and their knowledge level. Say, for example, you are writing a serious magazine on how anti-biotics can help the human race, you might not want to add a kids cartoon in that magazine, as this would probably cause people to not take you seriously at all. Whereas if is a kids magazine, you might want to add cartoon and visual things that kids would want to see more often, so that they may actually like what you have. In this example, we see a cartoon stuffed-teddy bear, looking real sleepy, which would indicate that this is something that is something that a kid would read whilst in bed. This is a small hint, yet extremely powerful on how to plan your magazine.

7. Contents page

A contents page can help your audience navigate through your magazine more fluidly. It can help them go to the specific page they want, like going to the article that they saw on the cover. This part of your magazine is highly influential, and should not be skipped at any cost for a good outcome. The contents page can also be designed in a way so that your audience can see the theme or genre of your magazine. A great example could be this contents page on the right, showing the main articles on the page, but also adding a picture of a famous rapper on it, showing that the big story is about him or that the genre is music. Your audience would have more knowledge about what you are going to write about. The contents page just simply cannot be taken lightly.

8. Use Color

Many times oversimplified, but color can be an important aspect of your magazine's success. Having a plain magazine might make sense in some circumstances, but overwise, using different vibrant colors can come to your advantage a lot of the time. Keep in mind though these colors should match with each other to make whatever the colors are being matched visually pleasing to the audience.  On the left, vibrant colors are being used that match with each other, looking very appealing to the audience. Using color can come to your advantage a lot in magazine formatting.

9. Stay Consistent

Once you have found a theme for the article that works for you and your genre, don't change it in the middle. This is a common mistake that many magazine designers do, resulting in a total change of mind for your audience. If your article is about international news then keep the theme formal and don't add silly pictures and other cray fonts in your article after starting formal. On the left, it is sort of a business article, that doesn't change after 1 page, causing the reader to be in a certain state of mind. Lacking consistency in your magazine can result in serious consequences.

10. Spreads

Spreads can be an incredibly useful tactic in magazines to bring notice to your reader more. This is the use of having one of your pages dedicated to your pictures and the rest of your heading and text itself. This method can be used so that the inside of your magazine can look as well as the cover, giving the audience the same satisfaction and pleasure to see. We can see this technique being used on the left, looking indeed aesthetically pleasing to the reader. Spreads can be incredibly useful in your design and should be kept in mind while writing and designing a magazine.

How this can be used is the Science genre

The science genre usually has an audience of well-informed people that actually enjoy the subject, rather than being forced to, so complex photos could be used. As we see here, a man is showing his prototype of turbo-powered physical therapy, showing the audience what it looks like, which would be hard to do in words. Science is a genre in that people can include a lot of visuals to have the reader understand fully what is being spoken about. This is how these tips can be used in science magazines.

Works Cited

Anum, & Written by Anum Anum is a designer who works with Photoshop & Illustrator. She writes articles and tutorials for the design and graphics community. View all posts by Anum. (2012, May 3). 10 really useful tips for designing a magazine. DT Blog. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://www.dreamtemplate.com/blog/web-design-tips/10-really-useful-tips-for-designing-a-magazine/

Fussell, G. (2020, June 15). 10 tips for designing high-impact magazines. Design & Illustration Envato Tuts+. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/10-tips-for-designing-high-impact-magazines--cms-25956

Kanti, A. (2021, May 5). Magazine design: 9 Incredible tips you can try now. MagLoft. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://www.magloft.com/blog/incredible-magazine-design-tips/#:~:text=Magazine%20Design%3A%209%20Incredible%20Tips%20You%20Can%20Try,the%20page%2C%20it%20needs%20room%20to%20breathe.%20