Cover page conventions

One the contents page whoever the cover model is they should be looking directly into the camera. The reason being is because eye contact is important.

When designing a cover you should play around with your ideas, you can exaggerate, however you should remain within your concept and style and you should know what you are going to exaggerate.

On each cover there needs to be one headline that will pop out.  In size, in colour, in attitude.

The cover page should have a focus point. There can be a model in the image it and it can be a headline or a number, although something has to draw the eye.

You should also divide your cover page into three sections. These sections should be the big one with a main cover line, smaller one with few a cover lines and the smallest one just adding more cover lines.

If you are planning to use orange colour for the cover lines you should print them with additional spot colour. The reason for this is because orange never looks nice when printed in traditional CMYK process. It will look a sort of brownish colour.

Green is the colour which is least used on cover pages. However red is the most popular one. No matter which one you pick you need to make sure you have a contrast between colours. It is known to be said that black covers do not sell as well, however they are wrong. They are wrong.

When writing the smaller cover lines rather go with black text or white if the background is dark. Although for the bigger ones use colours.

The masthead should be a bit below with some cover lines above it even if you have never done it. This would help if your magazine is tucked away on the shelves.

 In USA magazines they are racked in a waterfall presentation so that the top third of the magazine is the most visible part and there you will see the biggest cover lines. In Europe they are presented differently. Over here magazines are stacked so that the left third of the magazine is the most visible one. Therefore this is why there are so many magazines in Europe with masthead in top left position.

On the cover page photography looks better and sells more than illustrations on the cover page because it is more eye catching.

Lastly it doesn’t matter if you shoot the cover model in your studio or if you buy stock photo of a model background has to be in a solid colour.