Make Your Cover Work Harder For You

Use the element of surprise to engage your readers.

If you’re a fan of good magazine design — and if you’re even remotely connected with publishing, I hope you are — I highly recommend a visit to coverjunkie.com. It’s a website curated by Dutch art director Jaap Biemens of Volkskrant Magazine. Jaap scours the globe every week for the most interesting and provocative magazine cover layouts. When I scan the site for updates, the only uniform reaction that his selections inspire in me is one of surprise. The styles of imagery and typography are all over the map, as, indeed, are his sources. But I always see something I haven’t seen before.

I mention this not to compare Quarto Creative’s covers with the best of Jaap’s picks, but to pose a serious question: What makes a magazine cover good? More precisely, what makes a magazine cover work?

There are as many competing philosophies on this as there are cover designers to philosophize about it. Not every magazine enters the market with exactly the same set of challenges. Budgets vary. Audiences vary. Means of distribution vary.

That last point is especially significant for niche publishers. Newsstand magazines (at least in Before Times when people visited bookstores and newsstands) have to slug it out against one another to compete for shelf space and customer attention. Their success is measured in sales, subscriptions, and advertising revenue.

Many niche publishers compete in a very different theater of operations. For example, the association magazine is usually a membership benefit, sent to the putative reader’s home or workplace. While it’s been paid for via membership dues, it probably wasn’t purchased as a standalone item. At home, it’s jockeying against subscription material that was actually paid for separately.

Studies have shown that readers don’t treat the information included in organizational publications and newsstand publications differently. But another study — the Magazine Reader Experience Study, by the Media Management Center at Northwestern University — reveals a bias in user experience predicated on money. The most popular descriptor of the magazine user experience is “I get value for my time and money.” The transactional nature of the relationship is never far from readers’ minds.

That’s a handicap for publications that don’t employ all of the weapons used in the newsstand magazine arsenal:

1. Think of your cover as a page of advertising. Your cover has two goals: 1) Get your audience to pick up the magazine; and 2) Get them to turn the page. That’s it. You’re not offering an honest preview of the issue; save that for the table of contents. Be bold, be surprising — be the powerful alternative to any other magazine within arm’s reach.

2. Make eye contact. Studies have shown that readers feel an emotional connection to imagery that includes a character making eye contact with the viewer. It’s why celebrity-driven newsstand magazines have historically shown their subjects looking directly into camera. A sense of familiarity is part of the sales pitch.

3. Use numbers. Again, readers are seeking value for their investment, whether it’s an investment of money or time. Numbered summaries are great ways to demonstrate that value up front. There are arguments in favor of high numbers (showing the volume of valuable content) and low numbers (illustrating the simplicity and accessibility of information), but as with eye contact, there are reasons that numbered lists — like this one — are both common and popular.

4. Be flashy. If you’re going to invest in any one page of your magazine, make it the cover. Foil stamps, varnishes, die cuts, metallic or fluorescent inks, and gatefolds are just a few of the memorable treatments that can be applied to your cover, all designed to entice your reader to linger over the page for just a few extra seconds. That time can make the difference between turning the page and setting the magazine aside for later, to be read with the utility bills. And talk to your printer: The U.S. Postal Service even offers incentives for certain cover treatments if they enhance the tactile experience for your audience.

Let’s talk cover strategy. As part of its publication analysis, Quarto Creative will audit your recent magazine covers, looking for achievable opportunities to improve your reader engagement. Contact us at contact@quartocreative.com or call 224-730-1083 to make your covers work harder for you.