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We recently covered all the editorial design, definitions and elements used inside magazines. Click on the small text on the right. If you miss these videos or continue watching this one. If you want to learn more about magazine covers in particular, I will explain in great detail, all the terms and considerations that go into designing them. Join me! If you want to learn what is a splash, a puff and what makes the left third of the cover, the best placement for a masthead. [MUSIC] The most prominent and probably most important detail on a magazine cover has to be the most head, which is short for master head, and this is the title design or name of the publication, which you find here on the top third of the cover and most of the time this is created with a custom font and kept consistent throughout all the issues that come out. Sometimes maybe the color changes or the position slightly, but generally the font and the style is going to be consistent. The phrase most head actually ended up being used in Web design as well where again it stands for the logo or the main brand image. That’s usually on the top left corner of the site. Most of the time the Masthead takes up the whole width of the magazine cover, but if it’s shorter than that like with computer arts or GQ, then it’s usually on the top left corner. Now this is mainly because when you go to a news agent or a shop and the magazines are laid on top of each other, then this left Third is the only visible part, so you should still be able to identify the name of the magazine just by seeing that section of the cover, the type of font, the color and size and even the kerning of the mouse header really helps you to establish the target audience or target market for your magazine, and you can clearly see that with the example here on empire, which is a bit more masculine and bold compared to stylist, for example, which is much more feminine, the next element that we normally have next to the Masthead is called tagline or it can also be referred to as cell line strap line or even magazine, DAC, and this is usually a smart and witty way of defining what the magazine is about, like with GQ. Its look sharp, live smart or Esquire, its man at his best or with computer arts, its inspiration technique, great design. So as you can see, the tagline is usually a powerful, effective statement that can help to specify the subject matter or category of the magazine. Another similar element to tagline is called skyline or also referred to sometimes as banner or strip, which again is usually placed on the top or the bottom of the cover and again it’s as wide as the magazine so takes up the whole width and it, these two things can be very similar, but most of the time the skyline actually includes article titles or even names that are relevant to specific articles in the magazine, so it’s almost like the extract of contents like a mini table of contents in a sense so just to be clear with shortlist as an example this I would consider a skyline because of its position and because of the way, it promotes the different categories or genres that it’s covering, but it also works as a tagline at the same time since we have this example, we can also see that there’s usually a date line again very close to the masthead. In this case, It’s very tiny every Thursday because it’s a weekly magazine, but if it was monthly, then again, it would specify that there or quarterly once again and normally you would also get the issue number near this date line. However, here we have it vertical placement on the left side so here we can see its issue 507 and also the actual date when it was published notice that we also have a URL. The website for this magazine that again is usually placed close to the masthead, somewhere around there or also, it can be close to the barcode, which usually is at the bottom now with shortlist. We don’t have a price because it’s a free magazine, but instead of that, we have something That’s called a pug now. This is indicating that it’s a free magazine, and we specifically call these things pugs when they are on the corner or attached to the side of the cover. So these elements should always use strong color and high contrast, so make sure that they stand out from the rest of the cover and they are there to promote exciting news incentives or promotions. So the fact that this magazine is free is obviously an incentive for you to pick it up and read it. So in case of this magazine, I would consider this sticker to be doing the same exact thing what we just described, but in these cases, instead of calling it a pug, I would call it a puff or you can also use the term qualifier or flash and actually, the sticker effect is very commonly used, so a bit of drop shadow and maybe stronger outlines or even like a star shape like a burst is very commonly used in magazine covers. The examples that I have on this board are very stylish and really nicely designed, but if you look for cheaper publications, you probably would find a lot of these puffs and pugs and flash elements that just really wants you to pick up the magazine and really tries a hard sell, so you have to be careful not to overuse these type of things because just like everything in design less is more and a cleaner and neater look usually looks more elegant and feels more professional. Now it is worth mentioning that you don’t always need a container or bounding box around a puff. You can also just have text like here with a small symbol like in this case, that asterisk, so this is again, something that really makes you want to pick up this magazine and really entices you to read about the things contained in the magazine. So instead of this relating to a specific article, this is more like a general sales pitch for this particular issue. Now, even though on this cover besides the Moss head, this is actually the largest text. This is not the main cover line. The main cover line. That’s something that directly is connected to the main image. So in this case, I would call all of this section here. The lead story line or headline sometimes also referred to as splash or as I mentioned before main cover line and within the headline, you can also have additional elements like the model credit, where we actually see the name of the person in the main image. And besides the main text, which in this case is the music that matters we would have this smaller text or subtext, which normally we call Anchorage text or strap line on most covers. You would also get additional supporting cover lines like, in this case, this special report part here at the bottom left and these relate to additional articles within the magazine that are not connected to the main image. These are usually best placed to the edges, making sure that they don’t cover up too much of the main image just to avoid the confusion and making sure that they are not mistaken to be connected to the main image. It’s quite common with these supporting cover lines that you would get some buzzwords and here It’s a perfect example this special report, but this could also be something like exclusive or plus or and even more stuff like that now, on every cover, the most important and largest detail you would see is the main image, and this takes up usually the most part of the cover. So in this case, we have Danielle Craig as James Bond and notice that also there are some cool effects here with these shots that also in a way part of that main image, but most of the time these images would have a person who is looking straight into the camera. And that’s a way to really get your attention because when we see someone looking at us, that’s just really gets us drawn into in this case. A magazine and these pictures of people are usually a medium shot like this one here or they can also be a close-up with a strong crop. In this case, some magazines would use main images in a more creative way, like with stylist, we have this main character jumping over the masthead, which is quite cool, but what it creates also is a massive negative space here in the middle. Now that’s also quite common with these main images that the background would be quite empty or at least out of focus or not too busy to make sure that the main character or the main subject of the photo is highlighted. But because once again, in this example, the character is all the way on the top. It just opens up that wide empty space in the middle. This is a unique and clever cover design, which really proves the point that once you understand the rules, you can break them and that’s. When you can create very effective designs, it’s worth mentioning that the main image doesn’t necessarily have to be a photograph of a person. It can also be an illustration like this and most of the time by the way it can overlap the masthead as long as it keeps it still legible or recognizable, but it can also be even more complex illustration like here where it really takes up the whole cover or it can be less complex and just simply use typography. So in case of this wired issue, the three logos closed out would be considered the main image. Besides the main image you would sometimes also have secondary images like these, which are sometimes also referred to as thumbnail images and even these at the bottom would be considered thumbnail or secondary images on this cover. We can also see the barcode here on the right, which is required if the magazine is sold in a news agent or shop, but it is not necessary if the magazine is sent to a subscriber or obviously for a digital version and last, but not least you can also have frames like the iconic yellow frame of the national geographic or the red frame of time magazine, just like a frame painting or photograph on a wall. These also help to make the magazine stand out when it’s on the news agents stand, and it also helps to create a very clear visual margin, but it sacrifices the size of the main image and all the additional information inside it, so everything has to be probably 10 15 smaller than what it would be without the frame and most of the elements that I went through in this video would be usually used consistently throughout the issues for a particular magazine like with time apart from the most head and the frame that would be also placement of certain things like the Dateline and the price, which would most of the time won’t move between the issues, so consistency really helps readers to quickly spot the latest issue of the magazine, but also they will learn where to find the relevant information once they have been reading that magazine for a while And that is all. I wanted to cover in this video. I hope you found it useful. If you haven’t already seen my other videos on the elements of magazine spreads, make sure you check them out. The links are in the description below, and if you are interested to learn more about editorial design. Make sure you subscribe to the channel because I have a lot of other interesting tutorials coming up. Thanks a lot for watching like and share this video. If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon to get notified whenever we release new videos. Click on the link on my right and start your membership today to get access to over 200 hours of training courses and personal mentoring by me and my team of creative professionals have fun learning guys, and I will see you in the next one.