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10+ Magazine Templates in PSD
The magazine industry is globally raking in $100 billion dollars and is still reported to keep growing, which shows us that people still care about print and magazines are nowhere near being taken over by online content, regardless of how busy people get and how majority of their reading time is now taken up by the internet. Magazines still have quite a sizeable audience in fashion, technology, information, and business sectors, making it safe for the rest of us to say, that they’re still popular.
Elements of a Magazine Template in PSD
For the same reasons, magazine templates demand effective layout designs to keep and gain a following but designing them on a regular basis can be really draining. Even the most creative and most motivated artists and writers will run out on ideas and the challenge of publishing companies is to maintain readership making it all the more important to design a magazine with the following basic elements:
1. Headline: The front page of a newspaper is the one that people see first. For magazines, it’s the cover but the headline for its main story should also be interesting and compelling enough to demand to be read or notice. The text can come in various sizes but make sure to set it in a size bigger than the rest of the story’s text to increase the likelihood of the article to be read.
2. Kicker: This is a magazine’s introductory paragraph which is the main piece of content which is supposed to lead the reader through the actual article. After a succeeding in getting your headline noticed, you should be able to keep the reader’s attention through a kicker, continuing his “journey” into the body of the article and so on.
3. Body Text/Copy: This is a more lengthy and detailed part of a magazine article when compared to the introductory paragraph of the heading/headline of an article. A well-written body copy keeps a reader engaged in an article for the most part, generally till the end of the article.
4. Bylines: If you have written an article that was published before, you’d know what this is for. Bylines are meant to give credit to the person or the team who worked or wrote the article. The author’s name would usually follow the headline which is why it is referred to as the byline. Bylines can be written in the same font size as the body copy or the article.
5. Sub-headline: Magazine articles tend to be lengthy because they are often stories of people’s personal experiences, or an opinion, a special report regarding a topic or a person. When a page is too wordy, chances are, people are going to skip it. This is where you can sue subheads or subsections to break your stories or feature articles into bite-sized chunks to give the reader time to “breathe” in between paragraphs. Subheads also help the reader appreciate the article more as he is better to lead into the story through a smooth flow.
10+ Magazine Templates in PSD
Free Business Magazine Template
Free Photographer Magazine Template
Architecture Magazine Template
Free Design and Tech Magazine
Fashion Magazine Template
Free Lookbook Magazine Template
Free Clothing Magazine Template
Free Sports Magazine Template
Cooking Magazine Template
Free Music Magazine Cover Template
Steps to Design a Magazine Template in PSD
Magazines aren’t just a challenge for the editorial board. For the designers or the creative team, the pressure is double, especially for budding professionals. For the whole team, managing a large amount of content and conceptualizing what should be included and eliminated while maintaining a compelling, competitive and stylish look can be really tricky.
Here are some steps to get make sure you get the job done:
- The contents matter too: This is probably the most important part of the magazine after the magazine cover since it’s the first page that readers will see to check what else is in store for them. If your magazine is the type which comes with a lot of content or stories, you’re not going to want to cram everything in one page or spread. There’s no harm in extending your table of contents into two to three pages when necessary. Include a grid to avoid looking like you’re short on space and to avoid looking stale. Also, emphasizing your stronger stories is a great way to give a flavor of your content at a glance.
- Use color wisely: It’s pretty common knowledge among magazine designers that color is an effective way of making a design stand out, but you have to to be wise about using colors. Too bright and it’ll look brazen. Too dark or monotonous and it will look dull. A mix of bright, well-matched colors can really make a page pop. But by the same token, a minimal use of perhaps just a single color can also make a page look incredibly classy.
- Insert Infographics: Text and images pretty much make up a magazine. However, a good mix of them in infographics can give your content some added punch. If you open a magazine right now, you’ll notice that the pages either feature images, illustrations, blocks of text or all three. A page or a spread breaking this pattern through infographic is sure to catch the reader’s eye enough for them to keep reading on.
- Focus on fonts: Clever use of graphics and color may be important but let’s remember that the majority of the pages are going to be made up of text. It isn’t necessary that your headlines and copy body text are the same font and size as long as the font and the text are easy to read.
Tips in Designing a Magazine Template in PSD
Magazine design plays an important role in creating a publication. If you are thinking about producing a magazine, you are entering a crowded market. Here are some tips to make sure you end up with a magazine design that can compete with the rest of that crowd:
- Be consistent: The most popular magazine publishing companies such as vogue and national geographic found a style and it’s how their readers identify them from the rest. If you found one that works for you, stick to it.
- Make your type beautiful: Choosing the font that goes perfectly with the layout is great but make sure that there isn’t too many things or too many texts in one limited space. Align your text in an article properly so that it looks organized and more professional.
- Nail the cover: They say never judge a book by its cover, but they could never be more wrong, especially when it comes to magazines. The cover is a magazine’s and it’s brand’s main selling point. Judging the magazine by looking at the cover is exactly what people would do. The majority of iconic and most successful covers have followed the same format over the years. You’ll see one heading, one main subheading often focusing on a feature story and smaller subheadings giving some hints of the issue’s key stories.
Types of Magazines
A layout should not only look attractive but also communicative, which means that the layout should be easy for the reader to receive all available information. Here are the types of magazines based on their layout:
- Classic magazine design: This design is popular as a medium of publication and it doesn’t differ much from your conventional layout. The title is usually located in the center at the top of the page while the copy body is often arranged or divided into two columns
- Conventional magazine design: Probably the most simple among other designs, your conventional layout has the title placed on the upper left-hand side of the page where the reader would see which part of which is which.
Magazine Sizes
Magazine layout usually comes in these sizes:
Standard Size: 8 3?8” x 10 7?8” is an economical and common magazine page size.
Digest size: 5 1?2 x 8 1?4″
Magazine Templates FAQs
What is the importance of having a well-designed magazine?
A great and effective magazine layout allows the reader to break and disseminate information easily, regardless of a reader’s visual preference.
How do you make a good magazine cover?
Just like designing the contents of the magazine, the cover, as its main selling point should make an impact enough for readers to pick it up from the stands.
Digital content to the limit, available in just one click and a split-second makes the monthly print cycle of magazines seem irrelevant and the corresponding decline in revenue from print ads doesn’t help this either. But magazines are here to stay no matter the challenges and don’t let anyone tell you any different. You just have to make sure that you keep to a consistent design which would make your following identify you from the rest of the pack.
