Designing a magazine layout - terminology
Our top 25 terms and definitions
We love magazines. We love both designing and reading them. Admiring clever layouts and bold choices. And even though we strongly believe online magazines are the future, there’s nothing better than the smell of a freshly printed copy of your favourite magazine. Ok, perhaps the smell of freshly baked croissants. Yeah, that’s probably better.
There’s nothing better than the smell of a freshly printed copy of your favourite magazine.
Magazine terminology
There’s no denying online magazines find their origins in their paper counterparts and they share a lot of the same layout design rules, the same methods to spruce up your page and the same terminology. For this list we’ve focussed on the ‘old school’ paper magazines terms.
Glossary of our top 25 magazine layout terms and definitions
Whether you want to have a proper discussion with other designers, google the solution to layout issues you’re encountering or look really smart when selling your magazine design to your customer, it helps to know the proper layout design terms. We’ve put together a comprehensive list of the terms you’ll probably want to know.
Ok, technically It might not be a top 25 when you put them in alphabetical order instead of ranking them…
Adobe
Baseline
Binding
Bleed
Body text
CMYK
Column
Copy
Crop marks
Foldout
Gutter
Kerning
Layout
Pantone (PMS) colors
Pixel images
Prepress
Registration marks
Resolution
Slug
Spread
Table of contents
Trim
Typography
Vector images
White space