Eight Skills of Magazine Cover Design

It is a designer's dream to be a magazine cover. However, there are many constraints when designing the cover, such as the canvas size can only be around 8 to 1 1 inch, the uniform style of the magazine and so on. But excluding these constraints, the arrangement of words and pictures is entirely your own business. You can cooperate with some top photographers and illustrators. Your only task is to show the contents of the magazine on the cover and increase sales.

At present, the development of print media is weakening, but magazine covers continue to provide good benefits. This article will introduce eight methods of magazine cover design, you must not miss it!

[Method 1] Text placement: use light color where the background color is dark, and use dark color where the background color is light.

The cover of a magazine can be a photo or an illustration. No matter what kind of cover, attractive pictures are often composed of light and dark areas. When setting text, you must use a light color system in a dark background and vice versa.

So many magazine designers are looking for suitable places to put words. For example, The New York Times's "swearing" sentence below must be dark behind the words. The obvious representative is the following Interview magazine. The words on keira knightley's dark coat are bright colors, which rotate with the folds of the coat.

Modern designers can use photo editing software, such as Photoshop, and designers can adjust the brightness of the breakthrough to a suitable relationship through the software. The big black word "fanga sommarch" in Morberg magazine can be displayed naturally, but the background of the back splash is not necessarily so clear. The designer may highlight that part, and the specific method is only known to the designer.

[Method 2] Match the color with the text and use the existing color or complementary color in the background.

Black and white text is generally suitable for some subtitles or explanatory text. If the cover of the magazine is bigger, the headline text can finally add eye-catching color.

Many experienced designers say that the choice of color is never random, and the common method in magazine cover design is to match the text in the picture or choose a color that does not exist in the picture. For example, the red color used in Home Miami below is the same as the color of the chair in the picture, and the pink color used in Seventeen magazine is the same as the color of the characters' lips. In dewll magazine, orange is used, but this color does not exist in the picture, just echoes the main color of the picture, so it is very natural.

[Method 3] Three-dimensional text: placed between pictures.

Although the magazine seems to be on one plane, it doesn't mean that all design shots can only be on one plane. Many magazine cover designs also organically form a flat three-dimensional space with photos or illustrations and words, and some words may be hidden behind the pictures. The following cover illustrates this point well.

[Method 4] Highlight the key points: use the background color and make it bold and italic.

One of the main functions of the magazine cover is to roughly show the contents inside the magazine. So some main titles may be drawn on the cover. When reading magazines, designers must consider how to attract readers' attention to each title.

The easiest way is to use bold or italic. Of course, you can also add background pictures to the text, such as pink stripes on the cover of Wired magazine, blue serrated ribbons in popular mechanics and so on.

[Method 5] Combination of photography and illustration.

Back to the humble way of graffiti, the combination of photographic pictures and illustrations is a very good way to highlight magazines. The following magazines are all displayed in this way.

[Method 6] Art panel: Use unique illustration design.

Although it is different from the photo-centered cover of ordinary magazines, the cover with this unique color style can also attract attention.

[Method 7] Add some boring elements: price, date, barcode, etc.

Price, date and bar code are three elements that most designers may not be interested in, but they really need to exist. Most magazines put this information in the lower left corner of the back cover. However, some magazines put these elements in a unique position, making them attractive elements. This is the case on the cover of the following magazines.

[Method 8] Keep the consistency of the magazine.

Although the above seven methods give designers a lot of imagination, the most important thing for magazines is to meet the public. Every issue of the magazine needs to maintain a certain degree of consistency in order to maintain brand benefits. However, this consistency does not mean that you must use the same template, but that the overall layout and feel of the magazine should not be too big. Here are the covers of each issue of some classic magazines, and you can feel this again through the pictures below.

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