Editorial page layout • Magazine design for pitch material • Supplement design
New magazine concept development • Template design • Magazine re-design
With almost twenty years experience designing and art directing magazines, I have worked across a wide range of genres and styles including;
• Specialist titles - for travel, home buying abroad, motorcycle, cars, motor-sport and custom cars
• Part works - weekly magazines with step by step instructions on how to make projects for childrens’ art, crafts, needlework, sewing, fashion, home style and interiors
• Customer publishing - magazines for clients and organisations, New Labour, Rolls Royce, local council magazines, Suzuki GB motorcycle , off-roading titles and IT & Communication titles
• Consumer titles - weekly magazines, TV and celebrity gossip titles, It’s Fate, lifestyle and self improvement titles
All magazines are different and the important point to understand when designing a magazine, is about the target readership. When designing a magazine, it is for a specific group of people that form the readership. The magazine and editorial tone becomes the connecting link between those readers, who gain a sense of belonging to a club or culture by subscribing to that title. What you are not doing is designing it for yourself, therefore, a thorough understanding of what those readers are attracted and aspire to is the most important factor. Publishers and magazine editorial teams understand the readers and are the original wizards of show-and-tell. Magazines are more than the ink and paper they’re usually written on. The designer will be aware of the right elements required, such as; the colour palette, typography and style imagery. These work closely together with the editorial tone and content, to create a unique product.
This is an example of a magazine pitch design for a contract publisher in Bath, the proposal was to re-design and publish the Sunday Times Travel magazine. We supplied a selection of covers, feature stories and news spreads.
For the same publisher in Bath - another pitch design for a customer magazine, with licensing links to the channel 4 TV show, 10 Years Younger
This is an example of freelance magazine design and layout, for the launch issue of Soaplife magazine, published by IPC, London. It was a weekly soap magazine spin off from What’s On TV.
