Fresh Ideas for Improving Your Magazine Layouts
Magazines can be a challenge for any designer, budding or professional. Managing a large amount of content while maintaining a stylish, high-end look can be tricky.
Luckily, we’ve put together five top tips for elevating your magazine designs and making sure they look as stylish as they are informative.
1. Wrap Text Around Images in Unusual Ways
Feeling uninspired by the boxy limitations of a traditional text frame? Wrap text around images in unusual ways to create layouts that are less grid-like and more free-flowing. This is a great technique for better integrating photography with text to create a unified look.
Look for photos with plenty of white space to make this style work; and strong, simple outlines are easier to work with than complex or detailed ones.
Get to grips with the text wrap function in InDesign with this quick tutorial.
Design: Harper’s Bazaar US
2. Take a Bird’s Eye View
Make a drastic change to the angle of your photos for instant interest. Aerial shots are on-trend and utterly absorbing—they work particularly well for food and drinks titles, but travel and photo-journalism titles will also benefit from an aerial shot of a sweeping city view.
Aerial shots allow you to merge typography into the photo seamlessly—try filling those gaps with unusual headers and chunks of body text for an eclectic, creative style.
Design: Hieu Nguyen for Aww Food
See how the aerial trend is reaching new heights in the world of book cover design too.
Design: New York Times Magazine
Design: Caetano Calomino for Gloss Magazine
3. Go 3D (Psst! It’s easier than you think!)
Create multiple layers of text and images to build up a 3D look on your 2D layouts. Cut away the subject of a photo from the background and use this tried-and-tested layers formula to create a 3D look that jumps out of the page.
In InDesign, expand the Layers panel (Window > Layers) and create a series of layers in this order: Background of Photo, Text Behind, Subject of Photo, and, finally, Text in Front at the top of the pile. Splitting up your content in this way will help you to achieve the 3D look used in these Harper’s Bazaar UK layouts.
It’s a surprisingly simple technique to make your layouts appear instantly more vibrant and energetic. This tutorial shows you how to create a cool 3D look on your magazine designs using a simple frame and the Scissors Tool in InDesign.
Design: Harper’s Bazaar UK
4. Give Your Contents Page a Makeover
The cover might be the reason why someone initially picks your magazine off the shelf, but the contents page is the real anchor for the whole publication. The reader’s first port of call before they even get to articles and features, the contents page is an opportunity to create a style master for the rest of the magazine’s layouts, and it’s the perfect place to exercise some creativity too.
After all, nobody wants to read a long, dull list—introduce images, color, interesting typography and an unusual grid to give your contents page some life. You won’t regret spending the time perfecting this all-important spread.
Design: Matt Chase
Design: James Kape
Design: Aidan Stonehouse
5. Go Big or Go Home
The opening spread of an inside feature is crying out for big, bold typography. It makes a great pairing with dramatic photography, and choice of typeface and color can really set the mood for the whole feature.
Try an elegant sans serif like Didot for Vogue-esque appeal, or pick a rounded sans serif like in this example to make your layouts feel fun, childlike and bursting with energy.
Design: Matt Chase
Theme your typography around the subject of the article, and don’t be afraid to make it as bold, brash and loud as possible. It’s a sure-fire way to keep your readers engaged.
Design: Matt Chase
Design: Matt Chase
Discover even more pro tips for improving your magazine layouts in an instant, or teach yourself magazine design basics with our two-part magazine design tutorial.