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

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