You can come up with a title for your magazine right away, or wait until it’s more cohesive if you’re having trouble thinking of the right title. Whatever title you choose should reflect the theme of the magazine and be short and memorable enough to catch the eye of readers.
Take a look at some of your favorite magazines, or some of the more polished publications on the shelves, to receive inspiration for the style of your own magazine. What stands out to you about these publications, and how can you recreate these details while making your own work stand out?
While most of your content will be original pieces in the form of written articles, you can also piece your magazine together with photography, drawings, research information and even interviews with interesting figures. It usually isn’t a violation of any property laws to use copyrighted content or images in self-published work that isn’t being sold for profit, but make sure you’re careful about the sources you pull from anyway. The last thing you want is to get in hot water over exploiting your sources for an independent creative project. [2] X Research source
Reach out to creative people in your area to see if they’d be willing to have their work featured in your magazine. Even if it only reaches a small demographic and doesn’t pay, any exposure is good exposure when you’re trying to make a name for yourself. If you’re in school, look for contributions from science and art groups, bands or others with special knowledge that goes along with the subject of your magazine.
When you use a photograph, make sure that it’s either one you took yourself or that you have express permission to include it in your work. Remember what you learned in grade school: don’t be afraid to break out the glue sticks and colored pencils in order to produce one-of-a-kind artwork for your magazine.
Base your articles on a particular motif for that issue of the magazine. If your magazine is about music, for instance, do a rock feature and include interviews and write-ups about rock bands in your area. As with any form of writing, stay on top of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Proofreading every step of the way will make your magazine more professional.
Designing page after page of content can be challenging. It’s perfectly okay to take a somewhat random approach to where things go on the page, as long as the flow of the magazine makes sense. Trust your instincts.
Your first draft should be a little messy. You’ll have plenty of time to tighten it up later once you have all the key details in place.
Choosing a publishing method will mostly come down to individual taste, but certain methods will be better suited to certain types of publications. For example, a magazine dealing with traditional art might contain original hand-drawn pictures, while one about modern psychology would probably benefit from a precise, straightforward publishing approach. Printing the pages of your magazine will be much faster and easier, but will make less of a splash with readers. Hand-drawn pages will likely be more impressive, but require a much greater time commitment. If you plan to print multiple copies of an issue, hand-drawing pages can be especially labor intensive.
You’ll have no problem getting your pages in order if you’ve drawn them up by hand. Printing them, however, can cause complications depending on how you plan to bind the magazine. If each piece of paper will be a separate page, you can organize the pages by hand once they’re printed. If you choose to fold the pages in half and then staple them to make the binding, you’ll need to be certain you have articles and images in the correct order in the word processor, and that you’re selecting the “print for publishing” option that arranges the document by page number. [5] X Research source If you have a little money to play around with or need a more polished look for a school or work project, you can take your printed pages to a copy store like Kinko’s or FedEx Office and have them reprinted on glossy paper like the professional magazines in the supermarket. This will be more expensive than printing the pages yourself at home, but the luster of the finished product will be worth it. They can even help you bind it there in the store.
Consider utilizing blurbs, or short descriptions, on your cover to provide insight into the magazine’s contents, or bullet points that inform readers what they’ll find in the issue. For self-published works, a table of contents isn’t always necessary, but can be useful if your magazine contains lots of information divided up by article.
To bind your magazine with staples, collate the pages and staple three or four times down the outer edge; you can also fold the pages in half for more of a pamphlet style and staple down the center (saddle stitching). Binding tape is easy to use and holds well for most small print projects–just make sure you’re applying the tape straight and even to avoid mistakes. [8] X Research source Other forms of binding, such as gluing, lacing and stitching are also available to you, but require much more care and attention. These will need to be researched independently, as they are an art form in themselves.
Make sure you receive permission to distribute your magazine on school campuses or in places of business before you start. Whether or not it’s okay to hand out or put publications on display in a given place may depend on the location and/or the policies of the owner. [9] X Research source
