Digital Publication Design: 5 Incredible Tips You Can Try Now to Grab Readers’ Attention

Layout & design play vital roles in creating a publication. It’s no secret that humans are highly visual creatures. Therefore, you will need to do the best you can to grab readers’ attention while staying true to your brand voice and identity.

If you are thinking about producing a publication, like a magazine, you enter a crowded market. Did you know that even in 2016, there were already?over 7000 magazines?in circulation in the United States alone?

In order to stand out of the crowd you need to make sure your design is catchy, professional and of the highest possible quality. Thankfully, you can use several tricks to give your magazine an advantageous edge and make it look truly stunning.

Let’s jump in and learn more about those tricks that you can try?now.

1) Nail the Cover: Design to Impress

Well, they say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.

But hey, when it comes to publications, that’s what people tend to do. So let’s pay extra attention to how to get your cover to shine.

The key to getting your cover noticed is to have a cover that really grabs people’s attention. But grabbing attention doesn’t mean it must be an overcrowded cover packed with content or loud colours. Instead, an understated yet stylish cover can be just as impactful.

Most successful covers follow a similar concept. One main heading and one prominent sub-heading usually focus on a featured story and several smaller sub-headings. This gives your readers an overview of the critical stories and a more in-depth look at what else is in the magazine.

You can peek into our previous article to?master the layout?& how to make the most out of?fonts to attract your targeted readers.

The key here is to keep it low-key yet impactful by choosing the right elements that go well together. Your main goal is to get them to flip beyond the cover and read through the following few first pages, which brings them to the next point.

2) Don’t Ignore the Table of Contents Page.

Once you have your readers flipping that excellent cover you’ve created, be ready to greet them with a convincing table of contents (TOC) page.

While it might seem mundane, it’s probably the most essential page after the cover. This is where your readers learn more about your content and what they can expect to see if they keep reading on.

Sometimes you have a lot of content that you’d need to list on this page. Cramming it all onto one page will make it hard to read. Like other pages in your publication, the golden rule of a great layout is that it needs breathing room. You may spread your contents page out to two or even more pages if you wish.

On prints or PDF versions, most content pages usually follow a fairly standard grid format, but you can get a bit creative with it.

Your TOC page doesn’t have to look stale. For example, emphasizing your featured stories is a great way to give a flavour of your content at a glance.

If your digital publication is already in HTML format, then you have no reason to push all of your content info so close together.

Remember, your readers can always scroll down to view more information. Having said that, keep the most exciting stories and visuals?above the fold?to maintain your readers’ interest to keep scrolling and reading.

Try not to fill every part of the page for the sake of filling it. Remember that white space can make your design look stylish as well as helps to draw attention to the content you want your readers to be focussing on. On the other hand, too much going on can be pretty off-putting.

3) Be Clever with Colors

Color is a sure-fire way to make your magazine stand out. But you need to use it wisely.

A mix of bright, well-matched colours can really make a page pop. But at the same time, minimal use of perhaps just a single colour can also make your page look incredibly classy.

The last thing you’d want is to have a mess of colour just for the sake of it. Instead, take your time to choose your palette and use colour to enhance the content rather than detract from it.

Using a consistent theme or?colour palette?can help your readers feel the cohesiveness of your publication and resonate with your brand. Use them to communicate the emotion you want your readers to feel throughout the publication.

4) Communicate Efficiently with Infographics

Text and images are the building blocks of any publication. But combining them in?infographics?can really bring your publication to the next level.

First, it gives your content some punch. When done correctly, having value-packed info in a beautiful graphic makes it visually pleasing and easier for your readers to absorb the information. Otherwise, imparting complex information could be a text-intensive article -TL;DR, too long don’t read.

Most pages of your publication could either be feature images, blocks of text, or both. A page or double-page spread that breaks up this pattern using an infographic will immediately catch the reader’s eye and, therefore, their attention.?Don’t you want that?

5) Grab Their Attention with Pull Quotes

A?pull quote?is taken directly from the article, usually written in a slightly bigger font than the body text.

Sometimes, it can even be given its own page when the statement is impactful. The design of how you present your pull quotes matters, so it’s definitely worth putting some effort into these.

Just like how the cover gives a glimpse of the magazine, pull quotes can provide a flavour of what is coming in the articles.

By choosing pull quotes that can really connect with your intended target readers, you can then compel them to go into articles they might not otherwise read.

More Great Tips for Stunning Magazine Design

We hope you have found these 5 tips on publication design helpful.

If you would like to learn more, please check out?our blog. It’s packed with helpful articles to help you produce the very best magazine, as well as other handy tips and hints for your business.

If you have any questions or want to know more about our services, please don’t hesitate to?get in touch?or simply drop us a comment below.