Tips To Succeed In Magazine Cover Designing

Hi,
A graphic design professional may need to do various types of design projects in his career. He needs to be versatile enough to cope with work like logo and brochure design, not to mention comprehensive photo editing. As a matter of fact, designers also need to work for web design as it involves image usage.

However, some of these tasks can prove to be tedious and overwhelming for designers if they do not understand specific requirements well. Designing a magazine cover, for example, needs a designer to know more than tools in certain design apps. It comes with creative challenge and a designer designing a magazine cover needs to balance client needs with his creative skills nicely.

A graphic design professional assigned with task of making a magazine cover should focus on design consistency and symmetry. Every magazine usually follows an identical design layout and visual elements in its cover page. This can of course vary according to the topic of a magazine like lifestyle, sports, technology, nature etc. In most cases, magazines covers are designed according to a particular style for some time before they are revamped. Readers can relate to this design style which becomes part of a brand identity for magazines. Therefore, designers need to set up guides and grid properly before delving into cover design for a magazine.

A graphic designer making a magazine cover needs to do his research and planning well before taking up design tools. Its design depends to an extent on content. For instance, a designer making a technology magazine cover design should learn what is its cover story or USP. If it is a particular gadget or an interview with a technology maestro, that should be his focus. However, if he is doing a cover for the same magazine for annual product roundup and review, he needs to deploy a different design strategy for magazine cover.

A designer should preferably select an application for making magazine cover that offers robust output capability and supports print friendly formats. At times he may need to use two apps simultaneously for dealing with images and vector artwork. A design app with PDF output support and wide image import options should be used in this context.
A graphic design professional designing a magazine cover should have an eye for detail. Every single element in a magazine cover matters in making it appealing to readers. Contrary to web users, people who buy magazines read at slower pace and they can find even small design flaws in magazine cover.