Magazine Designing

(Sahar Riaz, Rawalpindi)

The worth of a magazine depends a lot on how it catches not only the eyes, but also the hearts of the reader. Ideas, writing, design and photography are some factors that can make a magazine attractive and great. Different types of magazines are:
1. General interest magazines:
This type of magazine is published for a wide audience and the focus is either on one or many different subjects. Every general interest magazine is tailored for a specific enthusiast reader. These are not only fun to read but also provide information on topics where a common man would like to read. E-g topics of humor, fashion, food and shopping
Freelancers or staffs write stories and articles and a lot of photographs and pictures are included in it. Entertainment, viewpoint promotion and product sale are the main ideas behind every general interest magazines.
2. Scholarly magazines:
Such magazines focus on academics. One can get in-depth information on many subjects. The format of providing information in a scholarly magazine is serious and so the text book alike. E-g health or technology magazines
1. It includes more graphs and charts rather than pictures.
2. Teaching and providing help in researches is the main purpose of scholarly magazines.
3. Sensational magazines:
Sensational magazines are published in a newspaper like format. They are thin, but large in size as compared to other magazines.
1. Flashy headlines are used for attracting attention of the readers and the main focus is on stories related to celebrities or any other amazing stories.
2. Freelancers or staffers write these articles, which are usually more picturesque than stories that are included in sensational magazines. These are also known as tabloids.
E-g topics include disasters, wolrd miracles, international relations and investigation
4. Literary Magazines:
The literary type of magazine includes fiction, creative writing, literature and poetry. In addition, many of these magazines publish creative nonfiction of various sorts. Frequency of publication ranges from weekly (such as The New Yorker), to monthly, to quarterly (four times a year) or less.
5. Travelogue:
Travelogue is another popular form of magazine. This is a great way to travel across the country or the world’s paper. These magazines can document what one saw and how one felt about the place one is going to travel. It includes pictures, memories and good and bad experiences of the visit.
6. Trade magazine:
Trade magazine is published for and read by members of a particular trade group. Trade magazines typically contain advertising content focused on the industry in question with little if any general-audience advertising. They also generally contain industry-specific job notices, a highly pertinent aspect to many readers.

Layout:
Magazine layout is the graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of various elements on different pages of a magazine.
Graphics and pictures:
Magazine is composed of eye-catching graphics and pictures. The term "graphic and picture design" refers to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication and presentation for apealing the audience. It often refers to both the process of creative design and the way of communication.
Margin of creativity:
Margin of creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the teamwork.
Monotony:
The magazine layout has monotony in presentation. The chosen graphic, logo, pattern or the name of the magazine printed on one page remains the same for the rest of the pages. E-g the logo printed on the left corner of the page will present at the same location on rest of the pages.
Theme:
Magazine is based on a broad idea or a message. The layout is designed according to the theme. E-g magazine for children will be having different colors and pictures as compared to women magazine. Children magazine may have the theme of affection and care.
Presentation:
The layout of a magazine is attaractive to draw audiences towards itself. Flashing headlines, colorful pictures, creative compositions, appealing words and graphics are used for appealing readers.
Color:
Color is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Magazine is designed with colors. Color can influence emotions, actions and responses towards things and ideas. Color plays an important role in presenting the magazine’s idea. The theme is visually presented with colors.
Every color has a meaning and according to the meaning color is chosen for designing magazine.
Blue:
Blue suggests importance and confidence. It is a color linked with intelligence and stability. It is best suited for magazines for technology and men issues
Red:
Red signifies importance and power. It is also associated with love, joy and celebration. It is best suited for magazines on day celebrations, mother’s love, or any important event of importance.
Pink color is the variation of red and used for women magazine or magazines for girls
Green:
Green symbolizes life, growth, renewal and health. In contrast to this, green is used to represent jealousy or envy. It is used for health, forestry, or peace magazines
Yellow:
Yellow is a warm, cheerful color. Yellow ribbons are worn as a sign of hope. It is a color used on warning signs because we link it with danger. Youth magazines are designed in yellow tones.
Orange:
Orange is a warm and stimulating color. It gives a feeling of energy and warmth. It is usually linked to the season of autumn. E-g New Year magazines, food magazines
Purple:
Purple represents royalty in many cultures and it suggests nobility. E-g cultural or language or literary magazines
Design
Magazine design is a strategic approach for designing specific type of magazine according to the interest of the reader in order to achieve a unique expectation. Magazine design is having following elemenst:
Magazine logo:
A logo is a graphic mark commonly used by commercial enterprises treated as a symbol. Logos are either purely graphic (symbols/icons) or are composed of the name of the organization.It is most often located at the top of the cover and should be the first thing the reader sees. It must be readable and tell people about the magazine.
Great Cover Photo:
A well-designed cover can get magazine noticed and even more importantly, picked up. Therefore, all cover photos must be of a good, high quality photo (in the proper resolution).
Photo that is interesting to potential readers or which tells a story is mostly chosen. Showing the unexcited face of an unknown person will not do much to get the potential customer. Choice of a photo that is recognizable to target readers is workable. Photos are powerful in making a good first impression.
Careful Font Usage:
The choice of fonts can have a major impact on the overall professionalism a magazine conveys. Using too many font faces is visually confusing to the reader. Too much "stuff" can be tiring on the eyes.
Consider using only one to two font families in articles; one for the headlines and subheads, one for the body text.
Multi-column Layouts:
To make professionally looked magazine, multi-column grid is used for the content of pages. For regular sized magazines try using three columns whereas digest sized magazines use two-columns. Along with the text in columns, pictures are also adjusted to make an interesting layout.
White space:
In magazines, some areas are left blank because stuffing too much text and pictures is confusing and uninteresting for readers. Experiment with leaving some column white space in new multi-column layout. Try running text in one of the columns only with a photo or graph covering the other two columns.
Stay Away from the Edge:
Magazines layouts are not confined to the edges, filling the columns completely. 1/4" margin is the minimum suggestion but better 1/2" or even more, page margin is suggested. Again, it looks more professional adding more white space and one will not worry about the possibility that text might be cut off when the magazine is cut down to size after printing.
Avoid Clip Art:
Market research has shown that cartoons do not sell to adults but if magazine article deals with child-related subjects then clip art may be acceptable.
Page layout:
The page layout aspect of magazine design deals with the arrangement of elements (content) on a page, such as image placement, and text layout and style. Page layout elements usually consist of text, pictures, graphics, page number and advertisements.
Cover
Magazine cover is the front page where glimpses of stories are presented to tell the reader about the issues discussed in the magazine. Magazine cover design is fighting for attention. A well-designed cover visually entices the buyer to choose one magazine over others in its category.
Cover design:
Magazine cover is designed with the use of pictures and text. The pictures are attractive and appealing related to the topics listed in the magazine. The text contains the flash headlines with appropriate fonts ensuring readability.
Main focus:
There is one object that is prominent in the cover of magazine. It can be the important event, idea, issue or a celebrity that remained prominent in the whole month or week. The emphasis is made either by a prominent background photo or large font.
Name of the magazine:
Name of the magazine is mentioned on the top of the cover along with the logo. The name is presented with a larger font, contrasting color or bold/italic formatting.
It may contain author name, tagline and symbol of publisher (in corner).
Cover layout:
The cover layout is of two type: Symmetrical or Asymmetrical.
1. Symmetrical is defined as the centrally aligned layout. In it the whole page is divided into two halves and the objects are placed in the centre.
2. Asymmetrical layout is not centrally aligned. Objects are placed either on the left or right side or both but look balanced.
Cover Story
Cover story is a story in a magazine whose subject matter appears on its front cover. It contains the glimpses of the most important issues discussed in the magazine to give an idea about what is included in the magazine.
1. It helps the reader in deciding whether to buy the magazine or not because the important issues are mentioned on the cover page.
2. The rank of importance is designed through the use of different font sizes. E-g the issue of great importance is written with bigger font, the less important issue with the font smaller than the most important issue. Similarly color variation is also used.
Paper size
A magazine tends to have a “book-type” size as compared to the newspaper which is really meant to be spread arms length in order for the reader to grasp its contents to the full. A standard magazine size is set approximately about 8 by 11 inches that is called A4 printer paper.
The General Interest Type of Magazines:
For modern versions of this type of magazine, most magazines adopt the typical size of eight by eleven.
The Scholarly Type of Magazines:
Some Scholarly type of magazines sometimes has the pocket size measurement of around 21 by 15 cm. Others follow a larger measurement set at approximately at 30 by 22 cm.
The Sensational Type of Magazines:
They are larger in width and length as to sensitize readers. It is having larger measurement of about 14 by 22 or 11 by 14 inches.

Sahar Riaz
About the Author: Sahar Riaz Read More Articles by Sahar Riaz: 32 Articles with 60167 views Being a professional designer and animator, I have completed my studies in designing i-e graphic designing, web designing and animation. Specializatio.. View More