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How to Create Your Own

Magazines: A Step-by-Step
Guide
Grace Fussell
15 English 
Mar 6, 2024 • 23 min read

Graphic Templates Magazine Graphic Design Print Design Adobe InDesign

This post is part of a series called Magazine Design & Templates .

The Beginner’s Quick-Start Guide to InDesign (Tutorials, Tips & Resources)

 How to Make a Book in InDesign

Creating your own magazines can be really fun, but it can also be a daunting process if you’re not sure
where to begin. This article covers magazine-making tips for print, but many of the design techniques and
resources mentioned here are also relevant for creating eMagazines.

Want to make a quick start on creating a magazine? Check out the selection of professional and easy-to-
edit magazine templates on Envato Elements.

Jump to content in this section:

1 Back to School: Magazine Design 8 Focus on Creating High-Impact Inside Pages

2 Consider Making Your Own Magazine With 9 Get Your Print Specs Right
a Template 10 Reuse Your Templates to Make Your Own
3 Or Create Your Own Magazine Template in Magazines
InDesign 11 Consider Adapting Your Design as an
4 Design a Cover That Catches the Eye eMagazine
5 Begin With a Great Contents Page 12 Conclusion: Creating a Magazine in 10 Easy
6 Adapt to the Genre Steps

7 Give Your Magazine a Consistent Style 13 More Envato Tuts+ Resources for Magazine
Design!

Back to School: Magazine Design

Here we’ll walk through the steps of getting started creating your own magazines for print, as well as
sharing tips for making the design process a whole lot smoother and easier for beginners.

1. Consider Making Your Own Magazine With a

Template
If you’re new to magazine-making, a template is a
sensible place to start. Magazine templates are great
value and allow you to dive straight into customising
your magazine without having to battle with parent
pages, page numbers, or heading styles. Most
templates are available in standard sizes and are
optimised for print, with a bleed and CMYK color
swatches already set up for you, which ensures you’ll
have no headaches when it comes to exporting your
artwork for printing.

All you have to do is download the template, open it in Adobe InDesign and start editing, by placing images
and pasting in your own text. You can also make the templates unique by swapping in fonts or color
swatches, to create a wide variety of different looks. It's an awesome first step to making your own
magazine.

Worried that templates can be a little bland? These 20 magazine templates have exceptionally creative
layout designs:

35 Magazine Templates With Creative Print Layout Designs

Marc Schenker
24 Feb 2023

This tutorial also shows you how easy it is to creatively customize an InDesign magazine template, by
swapping in different images and color schemes:

How to Make a Magazine: From a Creative InDesign Template

Grace Fussell
18 Jul 2016

You can find a wide range of templates over on Envato Elements for creating a magazine.
 Modern fashion magazine template

2. Or Create Your Own Magazine Template in InDesign

Alternatively, if you’ve got a bit of experience with using InDesign, creating your own magazine template
from scratch can be a really satisfying process, and it can help you learn some of the more technical
aspects of creating magazines.

A template is, at its most basic, an InDesign document made up of a series of facing pages (spreads) for
the inside of the magazine, as well as a separate cover template.

The inside pages document should have parent pages which feature elements that are applied across a
range of pages, such as page numbers and running headers. These are quick and easy to set up once you
know the basics. Expand the Pages panel (Window > Pages) in InDesign and click on the A-Parent page
icon at the top of the panel to bring up the parent on screen.

To insert page numbers, create a text frame on the page and go to Type > Insert Special Character >
Markers > Current Page Number.
Running headers, which are usually placed along the top or the bottom of each page, can be created using
the Type Tool (T). Include the magazine name on one side of the spread, and the article or section name
on the facing page.

To learn how to create your own magazine template in more detail, check out this tutorial, which covers all
the bases:

How to Create a Simple Magazine Template in Adobe InDesign

Grace Fussell
05 Jan 2023

This video course on creating magazines is also a thorough introduction to the basics of magazine design.
It leads you through from setting up magazine documents in InDesign all the way to editing the design of
your layouts.
3. Design a Cover That Catches the Eye

If you’ve ever watched The September Issue, you’ll

know how many tense discussions are held about the
design of a Vogue cover before it goes to print. While
details like background color and the placement of
article teasers can seem unimportant to the
uninitiated, these add up to creating a cover that will
either sell well or won’t.

The cover is the first point of contact between your magazine and a potential reader, so it’s really important
that it’s eye-catching, engaging, and attractive. Here are three tips for making sure your cover design is as
effective as possible:

Creating a Magazine Cover Tip #1

Using an interesting photo or illustration and blowing
this up to large scale makes for a good start, and a
handy tip is to always use photos of people who
are looking directly into the camera. This gives
the reader the impression of eye-contact with the
model, drawing the browser in and inviting them to
pick up the magazine from the shelf.

Creating a Magazine Cover Tip #2

Focus on creating a hierarchy in your typography,
setting the magazine title at the top in a large display
font, and supporting this with sub-headings and
article teasers in smaller font sizes and varied styles,
like italics, along the left and right edges of the cover.
Stay disciplined and stick to a maximum of two
fonts across your cover to create a professional look
and avoid confusing the eye.

Creating a Magazine Cover Tip #3

Use a simple and striking color palette, and look
for trending colors on sites like Pinterest and
Behance to pitch your magazine to a contemporary
audience. Aim for a high contrast between the
background color and/or photo and the type, to make
the text as legible as possible, even when viewing
from a distance.

This tutorial on how to create a cover for a fashion magazine leads you through some of the key aspects of
laying out an effective cover design:

Design a Fashion Magazine Cover in Adobe InDesign

Grace Fussell
02 Dec 2014

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4. Begin With a Great Contents Page

Once you’ve set up a basic template and created a cover, it’s time to start drafting layouts for the inside
pages as you create your own magazine. The contents page is the anchor of your inside pages, directing
readers to different sections and highlighting key articles (sometimes termed ‘feature articles’) which might
be of particular interest.

Unlike the standard list format you’ll find in books, magazine contents pages tend to be more visually
engaging affairs, with images, dynamic layouts, and interesting typography.

Most contents pages are structured around a grid—a series of square sections which the designer uses to
place elements like images and numbers. In InDesign, you can reveal the document’s grid by going to
View > Grids & Guides > Show Document Grid. Go to the main InDesign menu and choose
Preferences > Grids to edit the spacing settings of the grid.

Read on to discover some inspiration and top tips for creating interesting contents pages.

Make Your Own Magazine Content

Tip #1
Flush images and text alternately left and right
to create variation, to break the traditional left-
aligned list format. Allow type to overlap images to
create a more dynamic, energetic feel to the design.

Make Your Own Magazine Content

Tip #2
Boxy grids can be an effective way of sectioning
elements on a contents page. Here, the sections
are highlighted with dotted strokes to make a feature
of the grid. Type is highlighted in block color to make
the body text appear more interesting.
Make Your Own Magazine Content
Tip # 3
In this example, images are limited to the top third of
the layout, creating a minimal and streamlined effect.
A grey and white palette is reversed across the
sections of the contents to create a stylish contrast
and improve readability. Numbers are highlighted in
frames to make them a prominent design feature of
the layout.

5. Adapt to the Genre

This is a fundamental magazine-making tip. Whether you’re creating a fashion magazine or a travel title, it’s
important to recognise the audience you’re trying to appeal to and adapt the design of your magazine
accordingly.

Go to your local newsstand and scan your eye over

the magazines on offer. If you’re designing, say, a
food magazine, look at the existing food and lifestyle
magazines on display and try to spot some common
elements between them. Often, particular font styles,
colors or photo angles will be used across a range of
magazines within the same genre, because these
signal to the reader that the magazine is appropriate
for them.

Make a note of these commonalities and try to incorporate some of them into your design. You can add
individuality to your magazine by giving a unique twist to other elements. If all high-end fashion magazines
seem to use serif fonts (modern serifs like Didot and Bodoni tend to be the norm for titles like Vogue and
Harper’s Bazaar), you could give your design a unique angle by setting a serif header in bright neons or a
pastel gradient, for example.

Becoming familiar with some of the common design traits of your chosen magazine genre can help you feel
more confident with designing. Check out these tutorials on how to create genre-appropriate styles for a
fashion magazine and a children’s magazine:

How to Create Layouts for a How to Design a Stylish Kids'

Fashion Magazine in Adobe Magazine in Adobe InDesign
InDesign
Grace Fussell
Grace Fussell 10 Dec 2015
19 Jul 2019

6. Give Your Magazine a Consistent Style

Magazines can be lengthy documents and also, unlike books, run into repeat issues. Both of these facts
mean that it’s essential to keep your magazine design as recyclable as possible.

What do I mean by recyclable? Aside from creating elements you can repeat across large sections of your
magazine using parent pages, such as page numbers and running headers, you should also have
elements of your magazine design that you can quickly and easily copy and ‘recycle’ across multiple
pages.

This magazine template is a great example of how effective it can be to recycle elements. Here, a
geometric tile-like pattern is repeated across many of the pages, rendered in color against plain
backgrounds or white against photos. Teamed with consistent font styling (in InDesign, go to Window >
Styles > Character Styles to define type styles), the result is polished and pulled together.

Aiming for consistency across your magazine design not only gives the document a super professional
look, it also helps you, the designer, to save time by repeating elements across your design.

There are lots of different ways you can promote consistency across your designs. Start by drafting a
single spread—from here, you can copy and paste elements across to other pages.

Define the grid you’re going to use across the magazine, and draft out basic consistent elements such as
margin width and the minimum/maximum number of columns. You can then create visual consistency by
recycling graphics, such as patterns or backgrounds, typefaces, or colors.

In this template, the designer has created a streamlined, consistent look for the magazine by reusing the
same font (Helvetica) and sticking to a simple grey and white color palette throughout.

In this magazine design tutorial, you’ll learn how to create two sets of retro-themed magazine spreads,
which also follow rules of consistency in color and typography.

How to Create a Modern Retro Magazine Layout in Adobe InDesign

Grace Fussell
15 Feb 2018

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7. Focus on Creating High-Impact Inside Pages
Once you’ve designed an awesome cover, it’s easy to feel like you can rest on your laurels and neglect the
design of the inside spreads of your magazine.

Although the cover undoubtedly is the most important layout for first drawing in a potential reader, the
inside pages play an important part in keeping the reader engaged, ensuring they read the magazine cover
to cover as well as encouraging them to buy further issues in the future. With this in mind, you need to
make sure your inside layouts are just as engrossing and visually appealing as your cover.

Lifestyle magazine template

Creating high-impact magazine layouts doesn’t have to be high-effort. There are techniques magazine
designers use to maximise the impact of spreads without spending huge amounts of time.

Photos are the quickest and most effective way to add visual impact instantly. For fashion titles, look for
immersive portrait photography. Travel magazines will need plenty of beautiful landscapes. Lifestyle or
food? Aerial shots of food and drink always look great and allow plenty of creative opportunities for placing
type.

Make sure all the photos you use are the highest quality you can find, so that you blow them up to full-page
size without blurring or pixelation. For the opening spreads of articles, it’s good practice to also source
images that will fill two facing pages, so check the landscape filter on your stock site.

Read up on more tips for making the most of your magazine layouts here:

10 Tips for Designing High-Impact Magazines

Grace Fussell
11 Sep 2023

8. Get Your Print Specs Right

Perhaps you’re intending for your magazine to be a digital publication (see Tip 10, below), but it’s likely you
will want your magazine to be in print format, if not both.

If you’ve set up your artwork correctly, printing your magazine is a relatively simple process, and you’ll find
many online print-on-demand sites now offering magazine printing services. Alternatively, seek out a local
printshop or specialist publishing printer to source quotes and services.

Fashion magazine template

Once you’ve finished your magazine artwork, you’ll need to perform a preflight (in InDesign, Window >
Output > Preflight), which checks for errors like missing fonts and RGB colors in your document.

The main things you’ll also need to ensure are present in your document are a bleed (which extends the
color of the magazine pages past the edge of the page, to minimize the impact of trimming errors), CMYK
color swatches (not RGB), and that all your images are high-resolution (i.e. have a minimum of 300
dpi).

You can find out more about preparing your magazine artwork for print with this handy guide:

The Beginner’s Guide to Prepping and Sending to Print

Grace Fussell
27 Oct 2021

9. Reuse Your Templates to Make Your Own Magazines

Once you’ve created your first magazine, you’ll never look back! Designing magazines is really fun, and
creating new themes and styles for new titles can be addictive.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time you’re tasked with designing a new magazine. Reuse
your old designs, and adapt these as templates for new layouts. Duplicate your InDesign files to work on a
new copy and switch up simple elements like color swatches and font styles to give your magazine a new
look in very little time.

Even if you require a different page size, you can adapt an existing template by using InDesign’s Liquid
Page Rule, which you can activate when you select the Page Tool (Shift-P). Set the rule to Scale, to
scale the content fluidly as you resize pages.

10. Consider Adapting Your Design as an eMagazine

While print magazines have remained enduringly popular, digital versions of magazines that can be read on
eReaders and mobile devices have started to find a niche in the publishing market. This is why you need to
design your own magazine with digital versions in mind.

eMagazine template

If you want to adapt your print magazine to a digital format, you will need to change a few key elements,
such as the colorspace (from CMYK to screen-friendly RGB), page size (which will have to adapt to
multiple screen sizes and be rendered in pixels), and interactivity (such as adding optional page-turning
buttons, video content, animation, etc.).

These tutorials will help you make a good start on creating your own digital magazines. You’ll find advice
on how to set up your artwork as fixed-layout pages, which is currently the more common standard for
eMagazines.

10 Top Tips for Creating Your Back to School: Design for Self-
Own EPUBs and eMagazines Publishing
Grace Fussell Grace Fussell
07 Jan 2016 09 Sep 2016

Conclusion: Creating a Magazine in 10 Easy Steps

In this article, we’ve walked through ten stages of designing your own magazine that make a statement,
from adapting templates and creating eye-catching covers through to creating a consistent style for your
magazines and preparing your artwork for print.

Designing your own magazine can be a really creative and satisfying process, and it doesn’t need to be
hard work or time-consuming. Adapting a template is a great starting point and can save time that you can
channel into making your design look as attractive and polished as possible.

Make sure to check out the huge range of awesome and easy-to-adapt magazine templates over on
Envato Elements.
 Architecture magazine template

More Envato Tuts+ Resources for Magazine Design

Ready to learn even more about magazine design? Check out this video from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube
channel!

Plus, you can find even more articles and awesome resources from Envato Tuts+ below:

10 Tips for Designing High- Best Magazine Cover Templates

Impact Magazines (InDesign & Photoshop PSD)
Grace Fussell Melody Nieves
11 Sep 2023 08 Jan 2024

The Best Fonts for Magazine How to Make a Time Magazine

Designs (& Famous Typefaces Cover Template
for Magazines!)
Laura Keung
Laura Keung 23 Jan 2024
29 Jan 2024

How to Create a Stylish 35 Magazine Templates With

Magazine Layout in Creative Print Layout Designs
Affinity Publisher
Marc Schenker
Grace Fussell 24 Feb 2023
12 Dec 2023

How to Design an Editorial What Is a Magazine?

Spread in InDesign
Nona Blackman
Daisy E. 28 Jun 2022
06 Dec 2023

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Grace Fussell
Graphic Designer & Design Journalist

Grace is a graphic designer and design writer, and heads up creative agency Blue Whippet Studio, based
in Manchester, UK. A self-confessed 'print geek', Grace loves to share her experiences of graphic design
with others and has written about creative trends and design history for a wide range of publications and
 blogs, including Adobe, Shutterstock, Envato and InDesign Magazine.

Grace studied social anthropology and the anthropology of design at Cambridge University and UCL,
before working in marketing and graphic design roles in agencies and in-house. Today she balances
running Blue Whippet alongside top-ranking design blog InDesignSkills.com.

Visit bluewhippetstudio.com and indesignskills.com.

bluewhippet_

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