Fonts

When designing a magazine cover, a justified text is used for the sake of readability and appearance. To achieve that effect, a number of types of fonts are employed, also known as typeface. The typography could be aligned in a number of ways such as left, block, right-aligned etc. allowing you to arrange cover lines in a way that matches how people naturally scan the page and help balance the page so it’s visually appealing.

The type of fonts and their placement depends on the genre of the magazine. Although the cover is printed out in a visual frame, there is a chance that words might bleed or seep out on purpose to achieve a certain effect. Whichever cover line is to be stressed on also depends on its placement. Sports magazines for example incorporate bold, aggressive, straightforward fonts to suit the genre and mood, fashion magazines prefer elegance and style, and food magazines are vibrant.  It is imperative that moods do not mix because it would interfere with the codes and conventions of the magazine.

Another thing to consider is the word spacing, the space between words, usually 75 for minimum and 125 for maximum. We can also use default settings, play around and see what works best e.g. STUDENT STUDENT | STUDENT    STUDENT. One has to keep in mind not to space out too much as it would cause disconnection between the words. In addition, letter spacing is distance between letters. Letter spacing values can range from 100% to 500%: at 0% no space is added between letters, at 100% an entire space width is added between the letters e.g. S T U D E N T  | S  T  U  D  E  N  T. is the width of characters. Glyph spacing is the width of the letters and setting their horizontal value, meaning shrinking or extending their glyph.

Using hyphens, less than two columns and larger content would render the text on the cover unjustified.