How hard is it to make your own magazine?

How to make a magazine in Adobe Photoshop?

  • Also following up on this old http://ask.metafilter.com/79892/Viking-of-the-Year of mine, this time regarding how to make something look like a magazine in Adobe Photoshop. As talked about in my old question, I'm doing a project for school where we write a "Person of the Year" style essay on someone of our choosing. Part of the grade is connected to the actual design of it. It sounds like the teacher is expecting something in Microsoft Word, and everything I've come up with has looked pretty cheap and bad. Given that expectations seem low, I'd like to blow this section of the project out of the water. Only problem is I'm not experienced with Adobe Photoshop. Are there tutorials out there on how to make a typical magazine lay out? Or have any of you done something similar or have ideas on how to do this? Any input is great. NOTE: my topic switched to Pope Urban II, if anyone is interested, and the title is "TEMPUS".

  • Answer:

    Layouts are hardly ever done in Photoshop. That's the first problem. Think: Photoshop=photos. You want a layout application, such as Indesign or Quark. It can be done, but it's not easy, and you won't get the right results. If you need open source (aka free), http://www.scribus.net/might help you.

Corduroy at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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On style:Use InDesign or something like it. Photoshop is not for text.Use no more than 3 and maybe just 1 font.Use no more than 5 font sizes and/or weights, including your headlines and subheadlines.Use color in order to make things stand out that should stand out, not just because you can.Use grids and columns.Use a baseline grid for the text.Make your text wrap around an image.Use a big initial letter (maybe in another color).Leave plenty of white space.Pick good, classic fonts, not some crappy freeware one with bad letterforms and worse kerning. Something that starts with 'Adobe' and ends with 'Pro' is a safe choice, for example.Use a sans if you're going for a modern, clean look. A serif for a more serious, classical look. Don't be afraid to mix sans and serifs.Add a box in a different color or with a border for a callout or quote from the main text.

signal

Go buy a few magazines...see what typical layouts look like... choose one that will work with the amount of text/images/etc. you have...and copy it.

clh

why not play with http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/magazine.php instead? Put a photo in it, and use the page to add the text.

birdherder

Wow, I should have previewed. That made very little sense. You can do anything you want, easily, with a layout app. Not with Photoshop. There won't be any — and I mean any — tutorials by professionals exploring layouts with Photoshop, but you might, and probably will, find some using something like Indesign or Quark.

General Malaise

This way lies pain. Just use Word, seriously. You can do any kinds of divisions, column combos, background images and text flow with maybe a little sweat but not as much as if you were doing it in PS.

rhizome

You could do a magazine layout in Photoshop but the reason you don't want to is that all your type will look fuzzy if you print it out. If you were actually laying out an entire magazine you'd use the programs General Malaise mentions, but if you're only really doing one page then Adobe Illustrator is by far a cheaper program than either Quark or Indesign and I think easier to learn (I've used them all and taught illustrator and photoshop). Designing the magazine cover will be harder than building it, no matter what tool you use. If you already know Microsoft Word, it's not a terrible choice.

Jeff Howard

If you have the Microsoft Office suite, check to see if you have Microsoft Publisher. It's no Quark or Indesign, but it's probably sufficient for what you're trying to do.

platinum

I say USE PHOTOSHOP, at least for this project. I'd suggest scanning in a current magazine you like to use as a template, then erase and replace elements as needed. Take a Time Person of the Year cover, for example, and replace the photo with an image of the Pope. Find a font that matches (or to your liking) and use it to replace existing text. This, of course, requires a little Photoshop knowledge, but you'll more quickly be able to match a professional style/look. If you're hoping to make an actual magazine cover, indeed, use InDesign or something else. But for a project like this, Photoshop will get you better results faster.

Unsomnambulist

Just one tech note: Using any of the last few versions of Photoshop, text is not turned into a bitmap unless you explicitly do so, meaning that it will print sharp as a razor. Doing a magazine cover is totally feasible, as the amounts of copy typically placed on a cover don't require the extensive type handling of a page layout app. Pick up a magazine that has the general layout you want, choose a pair of typefaces - a sans serif face for the title, a clean serif face for all other copy - and have at it.

dbiedny

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