Magazine Design

                

Magazine Covers, no matter the genre, all share the same design principles or layout. When looking through some magazine designs, I have noticed that many or all magazines place the title at the top of the cover. Similarly to how people expect the main heading or logo to be at the top left of a website, I think people expect the magazine title to be at the top centre of the page. Following these principles, I think magazine readers also expect at least one image and pieces of text to tell them what to expect. Looking at these three magazine designs here, the main image decides what the rest of the cover will look like and what the pieces of text will say. For example, the Star Wars GAMEINFORMER magazine cover. The main image shows Darth Vader whom is a well known character in the Star Wars films. People who have watched the Star Wars films will recognise that he is quite dark and evil. The magazine cover continues the tone of the image in the rest of the design by including a dark and gloomy background and title to the cover. This is then backed up with a piece of text that gives a brief description as to what the reader should expect.

I have also noticed that many magazine covers involve the main image overlapping the title or logo of the magazine. This is not normally a good thing to do when it comes to anything else to do with design, however I think the designers can get away with it due to the amount of people that may recognise the brand by the font or colour of the title.