2.1 Choosing a Size

Hi everyone, when you're thinking about the size of your magazine, this is something you want to consider before you start anything else in your magazine. So you've already planned everything out with your storyboard, you know what kind of content you have, you know how many pages you're thinking of having. Now it's time to figure out what size your magazine is. Now the great thing about magazine design, is that there really is no rule to this. Only that there's a few standards that you'll find if you hit up a magazine shelf and start looking at the available sizes. Now the most common magazine size is an A4. This size is very close to a letter size document, it's just a little bit smaller. But this is what you're gonna find for most all of those commercial magazines, all of those magazines on the display rack are gonna probably fit within an A4 size. And because of that, that is actually the size that we're going to use when we design our magazine in the upcoming lesson. But you can get creative once you're comfortable with designing magazines. You can think square, you can think big, you can think small, there really is no set to this so it's up to you to decide what works. But take a look at those magazines that you see out there in the world and see what you like. For example, Computer Arts, their project magazine here is an example of an older issue, is very square. It's very different than even their regular issue, and it's very different than the A4 size, which is something like this. So you can get very creative. You can go outside of the box with your magazine design. It really doesn't matter. Just know that once you have a size set, that you're gonna want to stick to that, from that issue forward. And I will say that size, when it comes to this, cost is a big factor. Because the more creative that you get with your magazine away from that standard size, the more expensive your project will ultimately be. But that shouldn't deter you if you wanna get creative with your size. You can also get creative with your size if you don't intend to ever print your magazine. If your magazine is only gonna be viewed online, then you can go crazy, go nuts with the size, because that limitation of expense no longer applies. So we're gonna go ahead and start with our A4 document. [MUSIC]