OK! OK?

For most of the people, especially me, magazine is one of the things that are very important in our life. I can't imagine that if I live without magazine. Actually, I purchase different magazine from the book store regularly, Cosmopolitan (fashion), ELLE (fashion), People (celebrity), OK! (celebrity), etc. These are the magazines that I keep on reading, and I will also purchase the others based on the attractive cover page and headline. In many cases, the buying decision would easily affected by the magazine cover page, and most likely an attractive cover page should include some attractive or exciting photos from the celebrities. That's why some publications are willing to spend a large amount of money to buy some exclusive photos as their cover photo.

From the IPD course, we may find that there are some principles on document and we may use it to judge whether a magazine got a good cover design or not, and the updated issue of OK! would be a good example about this.

For the good cover design, the page has to achieve:

• Balance
• Contrast
• Consistency

Background information of OK!

OK! is a British weekly magazine, specializing in celebrity news. It is one of the most popular celebrity gossip magazines in the UK with more than 30 million readers worldwide, and now appears in 19 countries (Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Germany, Greece, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Middle East, Philippines, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UK and the US).

Latest issue of OK!
BRITNEY SPEARS is the cover girl of this issue

Magazine Title: OK!

• This is the logo of the publication and readers used it to recognize the magazine
• It was suggested to take up one-third to one-fourth of the page length to achieve the immediate recognition, and the logo of OK! takes up nearly one-third of the page length
• Font-types play an important role in achieving different design feels, and OK! is using the Arial Black (san-serif types) to increase the legibility of the messages.

Feature Headline: HOW I GOT MY BODY BACK!

• The size of the OK!'s feature headline is nearly as big as the title size-wise and in all-capital
• In order to achieve bigger respective font-size, the feature headline contains only 6 words
• This feature headline is related to the key visual – Britney Spears, it helps to achieve higher recognition

Feature's Tagline: HOW TO LOSE 12LBS IN 30DAYS!

• The feature's tagline helps to describe the headline of OK!

Key Visual: Britney Spears wearing the white bikini at the beach

• The photo of Britney Spears wearing the white bikini is the biggest attraction of the OK! cover
• The purpose of this photo is to achieve the visual impact
• This photo works best since the photo and the headline are parallel with each other

Besides the cover photo and striking headline, there are also 3 elements which affecting the attractiveness of the magazine: balance, contrast and consistency. These 3 design principles should always apply on all the elements on the cover page and they are the vital factors to determine whether the readers' attention could be grasped by your magazine or not.


Reference:

• “Design Styles” in COMM1043 Issues in Publication and Design, Tutorial 5 Notes 2008, The university of South Australia Adelaide
• © 2008 Mark Simonson
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• Copyright ©2007 OK! Magazine,
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