How do you design a magazine?

Answer 1

Well not like you used to. Magazines are still selling well based largely on the spontaneous drug store impulse buy. As brick and mortar dries up and the acceptance of iPads takes hold this market will crumble. I'm not saying tomorrow, but I am saying in just a few short years. Meanwhile, what you are really asking, if I may rephrase the question, is how do you design an e-pub. E-pubs are still hot and so is the bleeding edge e-pub publishing software required to make it happen. Currently you are looking down the barrel of a 1,500 dollar gun if you want to buy the software required to produce an e-pub. So what makes it tick-advertkising. Little smart widgets of ever changing sponsorship. Subscriptions dead in print, and few people will pay for a subscription to an online pub as there are so many free mags out there. SO advertising is your only source of income. So why would Revlon advertise in your e-pub? Well, because you just decided to run an article about why women of a certain age can benifit from cosmetics that have vitamins and moisturizers built right into them. The articles are there to entice the sponsors, not the audience. They used to call it an advertorial. It looks like an informative publication, but in reality, it's all about sales and product. Watch an episode of the old TV show called '"Heroes". It's amazing. Jump to the end of the episode and read the three major sponsors, generally: Applle, Dell and one other choice for today special. Then watch the show and watch to see if you see the sponsor's product in the episode.Profits first, design second. BTW, check out the Adobe suite of design products to see what you will need. OK so you took the plunge, got the sponsors and bought And learned the crazy expensive software. Now pick up three magazines and related e-pubs that fit the venue of the sponsors you want to schmooze. No need to reinvent the wheel. Good design is already on the shelf or the iPad, model your magazine after successful pubs already on the shelf. Don't kid yourself if you think you are an edgier designer or that your idea is so bleeding edge that there is nothing out there that can compare to the awesomeness in your mind. If it's in your mind but not on the shelf, that's because the other guys that already tried failed. It's all been done. So take th best of all three and make yours just a bit better.