By :
Ahmad Anis b. Mohd Fauzi
Faculty of Creative Multimedia,
Multimedia University
63100, Cyberjaya.
anis.fauzi@mmu.edu.my
Your flatplan is central to this process, and will dictate how readers use an interact with your magazine….
Feature lists, articles outlines, draft copy, images and laid out pages are all items that will appear on your desk when putting together a magazine or brochure. How ever, no document is more important in design and production process than the flatplan. To many designers it may seem a mundane piece of stationary, but it’s the flatplan that indicates how your publication flows, how readers use it and interact with it and ultimately how it’s design.
A typical magazine is made up of a number of elements, each of which needs to be placed on the flatplan in logical places. First of all, you’ve got your ‘ews’-news, interviews, previews an reviews-which constitute the staple content of consumer magazine like film and computing titles.
Then there are features. These generally come in four varieties: large cover-worthy features, which are the meat of any magazine; regular-features like columns or humour spots, which appear every issue like furniture throughout the magazine; tutorials or projects, which give readers some sort of instructional content; and picture stories of the kind you’ll find in anything from Hello-esque publications to extreme snowboarding magazines and on to high-style publications like Wallpaper.
Finally there are what you might call ‘standard’ magazine pages. These include the contents pages, the editor’s column, ‘meet the team’ pages, letter, subscription offers possibly Q&A or other readers-devoted areas and the next month page.This final category often seems the most tedious to magazine staff, but these pages are actually some of the most important. They determined how the reader interacts with the publication. Contents pages tell the reader what’s inside and where to find it. The editor’s column and ‘meet the team’ pages add faces and personality.
Subscription pages invite the reader to benefit by making a commitment to the title in the long community to the little in the long term, and letters and Q&A pages encourage community by enabling readers to communicate with the mag itself, as well as other readers.
The recipe for success
If what we’ve listed above can be called the ingredients of a publication, it’s the flatplan (a veritable map of the magazine spreads) that turns them into a recipe. Naturally, every magazine starts with a cover. This is the most important page in terms of both design and copyrighting.
It’s not only the medium through which the magazine is marketed, but by design it ought to tell its intended readership to pick up, and through its words it should communicate what the magazine is about in general as well as what’s inside that particular issue. In most quality magazines, the cover is printed separately on a different paper stock and therefore sits in its own four-page print section at the top of the flatplan document.
The other three pages are often sold as prime advertising space, but particularly visual or high-class magazines will use the rest of the cover section for branding exercises or as a place to run their best picture stories or other exhibition-worthy visuals that readers will appreciate seeing up front. Very rarely, contents or an editorial column will appear on the inside front cover.
After the cover, a basic flatplan moves onto the contents pages. An editorial and a ‘meet the team’ or contributors page will usually appear the front of the magazine, though if it’s split into very defined sections, each with its own editor, these people might be introduce to readers on section intros further into the magazine. Computer arts, for instance, does this Reviews section, where you’re introduced to the irrepressible by Mr. Robert Carney!
Early hits
Celebrity mags and those of particularly visual nature are prone to hitting readers with stunning or ‘glamorous’ imagery in the early pages. Picture stories are nice to run at the front of the magazine as they’re an opportunity to inspire and please readers before moving on to the news section.
Most magazine editors these days agree that news should logically appear in early in the magazine. Chronologically it makes sense for it to run early as it’s meant to cover what’s new. By nature it’s bitty and therefore news is a great place for readers to dip into things that interest them before committing to reading bigger articles later on.
News sections often have their own mini-flatplans assembled by news editors and the classic running order of news is to have the most important story first, followed by medium-size stories broken up with regular news slots and snippets columns (which are laid-out in the same way every issue and become called ‘page furniture’). The nature of news is changing through. Thanks to the internet, magazine news can be cut out of date before the magazine has even been printed. So these days news is being replace by reportage sections, or news analysis, which are still bitty but try to offer something that is either for fun, frivolous or just plain interesting, or more analytical and opinionated articles, it’s no longer a matter of just-the-facts-ma’am.
American magazines and ones that consider their content to be worthy usually have their letters pages very early on, like the Economist. However, most magazine editors flatplan letters in locations where they think they’ll get most response. Sometimes that’s just after the news section. In other instances it can just be before the reviews section so readers can talk about things they’ve seen and like in response to previous issue before going on to read what the writers think of new products or releases.
Breaking things up
In typical magazine, the main features start about one third of the way. Big stories can be broken up with shorter or more pictorial or practical ones. The nature of a feature can affects where its sits on a flatplan. If your magazine has tips features, these can be used to split up longer articles that are presented as straight prose.
Some editors like to slot in the subs page right after whatever they think is their most valuable feature. The logic is that if the readers et a buzz out of reading a feature, they’ll be softened up and more susceptible to a money-off offer, or free gift, along with six or twelve months’ worth of your publication.
Unless your magazine is reviews-led, reviews tend to appear towards the back. As well as reviewing the biggest new products and/or releases for whatever market you’re in, reviews nay thrive on round-ups and maybe even the odd opinion piece by of your reviewers.
Product-based magazines can also benefit from having a buyer’s guide at the end of the reviews section containing authoritative product listings and the ratings your magazine has handed out. Q&As and other bits and pieces can be placed towards the back, along with other regular features.
The page facing the inside back cover is considered a very important flaplan position. The reason for this is to do with how people browse magazines in the shop. Many start with the cover then just flick-n-dip. Logical-minded folk go to the contents page and find what they’re looking for there.
However lots of punters start flicking from the back so the inside back page can be used for something definitive about your magazine-sometime funny, sometime opinionated, something cool. Whatever it is, it has to effectively make people keep flicking back through the magazine and hopefully buy. Occasionally editors put their next issue page at the back. The argument for this is that if the person browsing the mags, they might spot something due for the next one that will make them look out for it.
No matter what subject your publication covers, your flatplan is what you use to control the pacing itself can be used to make a big comment about the kind of magazine you run. Big chunks of text should be broken up with smaller ones that people more likely they are to read a longer article too. And they’ve got them hooked.
Some editors wish to make their publication feel like a resource that readers can keep, like a book. To do this you can flatplan a section that feels relatively packed compared to the rest of the magazine. So a practical magazine might put all its tutorial, tips, and Q&As together in a packed practical section that forms the meat of the mag.
You can also use flatplanning to surprise readers or make a statement to them. Boost the importance of a particularly great cover story by something putting it right at the front. Or you can hide something esoteric and interesting at the back somewhere. Readers whom it appeals to will discover it there like a nugget of extra-valuable information that they didn’t expect.
Magazine layout & design
SECTION ONE
Designing a magazine
Welcome to the world of publishing. Begin by creating templates, libraries and master pages
SECTION TWO
Style and colour
Start to build the look of your publication by setting up styles sheets and creating a colour palette
SECTION THREE
Making your pictures work
Shop around for the right images for your readership, and make them look great
SECTION FOUR
Work faster-and get organized
Organizing a coherent naming system for files and folders, and setting up job bags, benefits everyone
SECTION FIVE
Where and how to use fonts
We take the stress out of choosing and using fonts, and explain justification, leading and kerning.
SECTION SIX
Getting the cover right
We show you everything you need to know to create an award-winning cover
SECTION SEVEN
Using special finishes
If your budget allows, use a fifth colour or spot varnish to ensure your magazine stands out on the shelves
SECTION EIGHT
Preparing files for print
Successfully deliver your files to the printer, and your magazine of brochure will soon be ready for distribution.
No comments:
Post a Comment