Tirso Gamboa

How to Design a Magazine Layout like an Editorial Art Director

tirsogamboa
There are a lot of these articles out there about how to design a magazine layout. I don’t want to start this on a negative note, but… have any of them ever worked at a magazine before? I’ve worked at a breadth of national glossies: Teen Vogue, WIRED, Travel + Leisure, InStyle, to name a few. Apologies for flexing here a bit. I want you to read this article with confidence in my background. This is the sure-fire way to design a magazine layout like a true editorial designer.
I won’t go into any advanced typography or color, but it’s focusing on the step-by step process. Although this process is for a magazine layout, you can apply it to other design projects, such as brochures, invitations, or posters. You can also use it for designing websites, but there are extra considerations when doing so.
For anyone already familiar with InDesign and want to explore, you can download the elements I’m working with here.
For anyone wanting to learn InDesign, read my Beginner’s Guide to Adobe InDesign.

In this article, I will provide an overview of:

1. Grids
2. Design Elements
3. Anchoring the Page
4. Layout Exploration
5. Creating Additional Options
6. Design Details
7. Adding Color
8. Designing Spreads
9. Finding Inspiration
Conclusion 

If you work at a magazine, most of these elements will are set already, except for the layout. You wouldn’t need to create them for each issue.

1. Working with Grids

Grids create structure for page and consistency across a section of a magazine. They are the fastest way to get elements on the page. When using grids, align your elements to the edges of each column. I sometimes use the center of the column as well. I put the following examples together using some of my photography, which fair warning, that it’s all food related.

2-column grid: This is a simple grid. It creates a nice symmetry to the page. You can also expand this to a 4-column grid.

3-column grid: The addition of an extra column allows you to to start creating more dynamic layouts. This grid is great if you have a lot of body copy. You can expand this to a 6-column grid.

7-column grid: This is the most common grid I find in magazines and it’s the grid I’m working with for the examples in this post. When working with text, it’s important to give white space. For this grid, I like to keep the text contained using 6 of the columns and reserve the extra column for a a callout or additional white space.

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2. Design Elements

Magazines work with text, images and icons. All these elements need to work together on each page. Providing the link to the elements I’m working with below again here.

3. Anchoring the Page

As I mentioned earlier, slugs and footers are already desiged. When you work at a magazine, you pull a page template that already has the slug and footer in place.

Slugs label the page to tell the reader which section they’re in. Just going to keep this super straightforward for now. On the top, I’m using the section name. On the bottom, I have the page number, website, and issue date. 

I’ve now created the beginning structure to the layout.
The first elements I add are always the title (hed), subhead (dek), and hero image. These are the most important elements on the page. You should give these the most hierarchy.
For images, these are often sourced or custom photography. A photoshoot is the ideal process. You’ll have much more control., since I design the layout first, so that I know exactly what I need to capture on set.
Back to design. The title, subhead, and hero should be friends. Lay them out so there’s some relationship between them.
Some images will allow space to add the title. For me, this is like a gift from God. They’re better than friends now, they’re blood relatives. We can see this used for section openers and the feature stories.

I always do few options. I have to consider how many more elements I need to fit on the page and options. I don’t want to commit to a direction that may not work later on in the process.

A couple callouts:
For each option, I also did a different type treatment for each. Also, note that I’m still working in black and white at this stage.

4. Explore Different Layouts

Time to add the other images and captions. From the options I designed above, I start with the first one and add the other elements. If I run into a situation that the elements aren’t fitting or I’m running out of space, I move onto the next option. Here are some of the stages that I took along the way.

5. Additional Options

Of the options above, I decided that I liked the direction of the two below.

From here, we can still push the options further by dropping in different hero or image options. I find that most of my designers skip this step. This takes a minute to duplicate your page a few times and then drop in image options, just using the same layout.

From the options, I like the hero image/title of one and the product layouts of another, so I merged them together. Here’s where I ended up.

6. Design Details

Push the design further by adding some design details. Don’t go crazy here. I let the main elements do most of the work. Somethings you can add are drop caps, icons, and lines (I repeat, don’t go crazy). I kept it simple.

7. Adding Color

I’ve only worked in black and white so far. The focus is on the layout itself. For color, magazines have a set color palette that is create for the readers. Industry secret: Entertainment Weekly’s color palette is based off of superheroes and are labeled accordingly. Green is Green Lantern.
Although the color palette for a brand is quite extensive, only use a few for your page or spread.

Of the four, I was drawn to the top left and bottom right with the stripes. I felt that it gave the page more dimension because there was more overlap. And the final layout I chose was…

Let’s Connect!

Each month I’ll send a design-focused newsletter with tips, some thoughts, favorite items I’m loving, a round-up of recent posts, and more.

8. Designing Spreads

The most common mistake I find are spreads that are designed as two separate pages and then placed next to each other. Let’s look at an example.

Spreads should be designed as one. Yes, they are 2 pages, but it’s not really a “spread” unless they relate to each other. The easiest way to do this is to have at least one element cross the gutter of your spread. 

Another way to do this is by relating color, shape, or a concept (for more advanced designers) on the other page. Examples of each below.

For more examples and inspiration, you can look into the works of Fred Woodward (GQ), Carla Frank (O, the Oprah Magazine) and Ed Leida (W Magazine).

9. Finding Inspiration

The most obvious place should be to open up a magazine. Pay attention to everything I mentioned above. You may have a few consecutive months of issues. Compare how the sections change every month. Understand how the designer uses similar elements and produces different layouts.
Other sources for inspiration are:
Creative directors that inspired me to work in magazines:
I don’t have links to the list below, but definitely look into them!
1. Fred Woodward
2. Ed Leida
3. Alexey Brodovitch
4. Herb Lubalin

Conclusion

Design is all about process. When designers skip steps along the way, I often tell them to take a step back, or worse, start over. I’m guilty of this myself. When I started my first magazine job, I felt like I was guessing and it was so stressful.
Some things to watch out for:
1. Working with only one title/hero image option limits you when adding the other elements. You will constantly adjust and this can throw off your hierarchy.
2. Not dropping other image options into a layout. The only time you don’t need to do this is when you only have one image to work with. If I had a dollar for every time.
3. Color should catch the readers attention. Adding color too soon can distract you from other elements on the page.
Unpopular opinion: Perfect practice makes perfect! Developing a process will take the guess work when you start designing a page. If I can’t encourage better habits, then I’ll discourage bad habits. It took me a while to develop my process, but it’s what made me a more efficient designer.
I want you to produce the best work you’re able to. And you can by trusting in the process.
Keep on creating!
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