Mister Wilson's Graphic Design Class: Design and Create an Original Magazine Cover

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Design and Create an Original Magazine Cover

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is a combination of using Digital Photography and 3 programs to create one product, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign. Find a high resolution image and process the photo with filters if you wish in photoshop and use it to design an original magazine cover with Adobe Indesign. You will create additional artistic elements with Illustrator as well. This project is a good lesson in utilizing multiple software tools. You need to use original photos and content!

Part 1 - Launch and Explore InDesign

If you are confident with Indesign you can skip ahead, if you feel you need more familiarity with Indesign than read through and try out all the tools in Indesign before proceeding.
Go to the dock and launch InDesign, or look in your Applications folder to find the app
Go to the File Menu and create a New Document
Go to the Window Menu and set your Workspace to Advanced
Explore the tool bar, click on the text tool and draw a text box to create text, try the shape tools and look for the color modifiers to change colors
Open all the palettes under the Window Menu and explore all the functions, look at the quick guides below for reference
See if you can create text of different sizes, change the colors, modify the text kerning and tracking and draw shapes in different colors and with different borders

Hidden Tools and Shortcut Keys

Character Formatting Panel In InDesign

Paragraph Formatting Panel in InDesign

Part 2 - Magazine Cover Design Project:

Think up a magazine topic and title for your cover design, create a simple pencil sketch of the cover including all photos, art, titles, headers, text insets Your magazine must have a title header that is created in Illustrator, a cover photo that has been post-processed in Photoshop, a photo inset, text headlines with effects created with Indesign. It should also include all details such as month, date, edition number, etc.
When you design is ready grab a camera and shoot your cover photo, use Photoshop to post process the image for your cover. Crop, colorize, convert to black and white, use filters for an illustration look.... do something creative with your cover image
Design your magazine title with Illustrator, spend time making the typography and any illustrative elements look perfect. Consider colors that will blend well with your cover image
Create decorative borders or inset elements with Illustrator
Set up your document in Indesign for standard letter size.... import all your different elements and begin arranging them on the page.... create any additional typographic elements in Indesign... use colors that are complimentary and read well.
Add your image insets and additional details for a polished look, make it perfect!
If you need some standards to go by or some inspiration, check out this tutorial: Magazine cover design tutorial with Indesign

Here is the progression of my magazine cover design. I took the photo, processed it with Photoshop, added colorful borders in Illustrator and brought it into Indesign to create my magazine cover design.