Tips for Creating Inspiring Magazine Cover Designs

For any designer, the greatest challenge is crafting a magazine cover that engages its reader while serving the purpose and that has a strong focal point. The magazine cover should also reflect the genre and all possible inclusions perfectly.

Use of color and typographic hierarchy and shelf placement play a key role in designing awe-inspiring covers. Arranging texts, touching up photos and a lot more in there in the process. Only a professional can make sure of desired quality and implication in that. Digital versions are rapidly replacing print media but the significance of cover sketch has in fact increased. The reason for the same is that, now people are exposed to more options and the time you have to arrest their attention is minimum.

Some of the magazine covers design tips that can work miracles to create visually appealing magazine designs are discussed below. Let’s have a look.

Use text on design adequately

The text and design should mutually complement. The underlying element of any magazine cover layout, as per expert service providers would either be an illustration or a photograph. It must be assured that the text is readable. For that, on a light background, text must be in dark or vice versa. Most of the companies use proper software for darkening or lightening areas to place texts.

The bolder and bigger text elements of magazine cover demands you to inject appropriate colour. It should not be a randomly chosen one but deliberately decided.

Certain companies offering magazine designing services follow a creative approach. They put the design elements in multiple planes. Most of them virtually set up 3 layers.

Design magazine cover by amalgamating different elements shrewdly

To make a cover stand separated from the herd, professional companies offering graphic designing services use a combination of photographs and illustrations creatively. Blending two worlds on a common platform can really be motivating. Some even ignore typographic fonts and use hand-written fonts.

There are service providers who shun away photo centric approaches. They confine to typography or illustration-only cover but for good. Unique style and perfect colour combinations are more important here.

It’s not a rule but being consistent is preferred.

Maintaining consistency in the magazine cover designing keeps your brand intact, especially in case of a regular publication. You have enough room for being creative if above tips are effectively utilized by the company in its processes. However if you think that sacrificing magazine design consistency can help you to do something even better, there is no harm.

Magazine Cover Lines

This type of magazine cover design includes a message or a statement on the cover page of the magazine. Whether you wish to use few cover lines or fill the entire space with it, the choice depends on the type of magazine you are publishing.

The cover lines are usually written by the magazine’s editor in chief or the copy editors. It may seem very easy, but it takes a lot of time and effort to come up with a line that is appealing and attractive.

A cover line can either be a solution to the problems, a powerful statement, a call-to-action, or some kind of wordplay. If you are using wordplay, be careful with the language. For example, English is good with it but other languages may not be. Also, see that the lines are easy to understand for the readers.