Laying Out a Magazine

I don’t know if this is of interest to most people, but I’ll bet these are things you never consider when you’re looking at DreamForge or any other print magazine. There are several the challenges in the graphical and layout aspects of making a magazine that I expect most people never realize.

It’s a great puzzle!

The order of the stories and how they work together is one of the factors. DreamForge always starts with a one page story or poem even before the Table of Contents. After the TOC I usually start with a mid length story and then balance between longer and shorter, science fiction and fantasy, and even the emotional depth of the stories. These are some of the story elements I consider as I order the stories.

Then there’s the length of the stories and how they fit together. I have a spreadsheet that shows every issue of DreamForge, with the size of the story and the number of pages needed for that story. For example, I could tell you that (based on DreamForge standard font size, margins, and art) a 3000 word story will likely fit on 4 pages, but as soon as it’s as much as over that, it’s going to be 5 pages. That factors in to my decisions too. As often as possible, I want stories to start on the left page and have a 2 page spread to open the story. (It doesn’t always work out like that.)

Explaining the Diagram

The diagram in this post shows a mini layout of the pages from DreamForge 11. The gold bars represent SF and the blue bars fantasy. (This issues was pretty heavy on fantasy.) You can see how I tried to space them out. Even so, I used two SF stories in a row – The Express and Conference of the Birds. I could have swapped The Express with No Real Evidence, but after The Lost Village, No Real Evidence didn’t feel like resonated – it was too much of a shift in tone. The Express fit better emotionally – so I opted for two SF stories in a row.

The pink bars show the two page spreads. When Vern Fronk Returns to Our Neighborhood took 5 pages, and No Place in Space was three, that was a natural fit and allowed the next story to start on a two page spread. Then when The Art of Unpicking Stitches needed 5 pages, I used the one page Demonology Book Club as the odd page so The Joy Fund would start on another two page spread.

And Even More to Consider

Now add in the art too. I tend to give a background color, texture, or border to stories. If you’re leafing through the magazine, you should visually be able to tell where one story ends and the next one starts. This issue (DreamForge 11) is a little heavy on greens. Vern Fronk Returns to Our Neighborhood, The Joy Fund, Pour One Out, and No Real Evidence have different tones and amounts of green…and Where Rivers Meet has a lot of green in the illustration. (I guess I didn’t do a great job on colors in this issue!)

The goal is to get most stories to fit nicely into their designated pages. Occasionally, I’ll tweak the font size to be a touch bigger or smaller, but more often I control the spacing by marking the art bigger or smaller as needed. For example in Where Rivers Meet, I would have liked to have made the spot illustration bigger (because I put hours of time into the detail in it). But the story had to fit on 6 pages, so the spot is rather small. In Conference of the Birds, the story wouldn’t fit on 5 pages, so I gave it 6 and placed a one third page ad at the end. I also added a “callout” – a box of decorative text – on the 5th page to add some visual interest.

Finally I strive for good “readability” – I want it to be easy to read. Generally that means black text on a light background. I have to make sure the background textures are subtle enough that it doesn’t make it hard to read. And – if I use white text on a black background – I make sure the text is bold and sometimes a bit larger. I’ll often do that in the story opening (like No Place in Space or Conference of the Birds, but sometimes, if the story is short enough, I’ll do that for the entire story like The Express or Against the Time Beasts.

I guess I better get back to working on DreamForge Issue 12!