Despite social media and online communication being present, printed magazines are still popular. Their format and the experience they provide keep them appealing to the readers. Most readers still cling to that unique feeling that holding a printed magazine in their hands offers.
The thing with magazines is that they are incredibly informative. They cover a wide range of topics, from science to current and trending events, fashion, music, and sports. However, it’s not the topics that make a great magazine. It’s an exquisite magazine printing practice.
With that in mind, we’ll shed some light on what the best practices for magazine printing are.
1. Plan Your Magazine Printing Project Down to The Last Detail
Everything starts with the planning phase. This is where you determine your goals, how you want your magazine to look and feel, what materials you’re going to use, what are the best custom magazine printing techniques, and so on.
Paying attention to all these details greatly matters. If you decide to hire a magazine printing company to print your magazine, you need to still keep in mind a few design factors. The key essentials to focus on are:
- Trim line
- Live area
- Crop marks
- Bleed area
These four elements will make sure that your magazine printing efforts give the desired results.
2. Use Top-Quality Images
Use only high resolution and top-quality images. We live in a visual world of the internet and digital technologies. Modern readers demand the highest standard when consuming any type of content, digital or otherwise.
Your magazine has to be of the highest quality to achieve the desired goal. Therefore, pay attention to the resolution and file format. The standard resolution used for magazine printing is 300 pixels per inch (ppi).
When it comes to formats, Photoshop’s TIFF, JPG, PSD, and PDF are all perfect for images with transparency, layers, and spot colors. Avoid formats like PNG, BMP, and GIF.
3. Right Fonts Help Appeal to Readers
Do some research on how different fonts appeal to different types of readers. Even though this might sound insignificant, trust us when we say it’s important. That aside, you need fonts that are easily embedded in PDF files, to avoid ruining the layout and typography.
There are a couple more things to think about – the font’s legibility and making the font proportional. To improve the font’s appearance, you can use proper kerning.
Different types of articles demand different types of fonts to help you convey your message and represent your ideas in a manner which will appeal to your readers.
4. Right Colors Help You Grab Attention of Your Readers
Using the right color is a vital step in your magazine printing process. It’s essential to know the difference between process colors like CMYK and RGB. CMYK colors are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. RGB colors are red, green, and blue.
It’s common practice to start with the CMYK color mode and add other colors later. It’s important to know that CMYK doesn’t go well with certain brighter colors.
If you have to combine CMYK with brighter colors, use spot or Pantone colors. They will help you achieve complete color matching and create more vibrant content.
5. Pay Special Attention to Printing
There are three primary types of printing:
- Offset printing – this type of printing gives way to printing a combination of images and words.
- Gravure printing – used for high-volume printing, this type of printing works the best with image-based magazines.
- Digital printing – the best type of printing for custom magazine printing
While these tips can help print your magazine in the best ways possible, hiring a magazine printing Chicago company is the best way to gain profound knowledge on the best magazine printing practices.
Contact us today to find out more about magazine printing services.
