Good magazine design is invisible. Readers notice the stories, the photography, the ideas. The layout guides them through without them realising it. Bad design gets noticed immediately.
Magazine layout is more than aesthetics. It creates hierarchy, guides the reader, establishes brand identity and drives commercial value. Every choice in typography, white space, image placement and colour either reinforces what a title stands for or undermines it. The fundamentals apply whether the output is a printed spread, a tablet edition or a responsive web page.
Design is a verb, not a noun. It's a process. It's not just shapes and colours, it's about understanding who you are, and then matching your values to those of your customers.
Andy Cowles Four design decisions that will transform the experience of your brand
Cover design deserves particular attention from specialist and B2B publishers. A cover that once lived only in print now exists as a digital thumbnail, an email header, a social media post. Getting it right means understanding not just what looks good, but who your reader is and what makes them pick you up.
Editorial design across the sector has never faced more demands. User experience, responsive layout, the balance between advertising and editorial on screen. These require design thinking that goes beyond traditional magazine design skills. Publishers who treat their digital presence as an afterthought to print are missing significant opportunities.
Below you'll find some of our best feature articles on the subject, from practical design guidance to case studies and expert interviews, alongside our latest news and industry commentary.
Design can make or break your publishing brand, so it’s worth putting in the time to get it right. There are four key areas that publishers need to focus on, says Andy Cowles.
The purpose of design is to engage readers and ensure they continue reading, says Michael Chinnery, founder of CPUK Print Publishing.
It’s not just newsstand titles that require well designed covers, says Andy Cowles. For specialist titles too, the front cover helps define the magazine and its readers.
Welcome to our latest special feature, this time looking at all aspects of content production and UX. All of the insights and opinions come from leading suppliers to the publishing sector and from senior executives at UK publishing companies.
Don’t rush to conclusions about UX issues, says OpenAthens’ Sarah Underwood; take time to understand the problem.
When it comes to image quality, publishers tend to put much more effort into pictures that appear in print than those that appear online. This, says Pixometry's John de Jong, is a mistake and one that can be easily avoided.
Welcome to our first publishing workflows special, an extended feature taking an in-depth look at all aspects of the content creation process. All of the insights and opinions come from leading suppliers of publishing software & from senior editors.
Pensord Digital, a brand new arm of the specialist magazine printer, is launching in the new year, equipped with the first Heidelberg Linoprint CP (Commercial Production) digital press to be installed in the UK.
The Supplier Q&A for the May/June 2013 issue of InPublishing was, Is print purely about cost? It was answered by Roger Pitt of Headley Brothers and Andrew LG Jones of Stephens & George.
