Custom magazine cover demystified

It has been many years since you have met for the first time, exchanged smiles, looked eyes into eyes, and then there was a perfect Kodak moment. The time stopped, sun dimmed, the stars glittered throwing away brilliant light, and the wind blew lovingly. It was a perfect Kodak moment. What if you could freeze the time there? What if you could make it last longer? What if you could…?

The gift idea we are going to share will make “your perfect Kodak moment “eternal. This gift is neither for her, nor for you, but this gift is perfect both of you. We are asking you to gift her a custom made magazine cover for this anniversary. She will be more than delighted to see this gift as well as the sparkle in your eyes and smile on your face.

Custom magazine cover explained

To create this custom magazine cover you will need a working knowledge of image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source), and page designing software like Adobe PageMaker or Quark Express. To come up with creative lines for the cover, you will need free-flying imagination, and a deep desire to gift your wife a highly personalized creative gift.

The first step in the process of creating this personalized gift is to search for an ideal magazine cover on which you will base the layout and the design of your super gift. Create a base layout for the magazine cover by putting appropriate place-holders for the title, date, month, year, issue, volume, price, featuring attractions, titles of imaginary articles, and the cover image.

Now it’s the time to find an appropriate picture for the cover image. I will suggest you to use the portrait picture that was clicked on the day of your marriage or engagement. Use any image editing software to remove the background from the selected cover image. The image editing software will further be used to optimize the cover image for printing.

The next step is to think of a name for the magazine. Show your creativity and come up with an attractive name that should not lose its charm after a year or two “Our Wedding”, “Marital Bliss”, “Wedding Bells”, “Big Day” etc could be used.

The date, month and year of your wedding should be filled in the appropriate placeholders. Volume for this magazine cover will be ‘one’, and issue will also be ‘one’. In the placeholder for price write ‘priceless’ and besides that write ‘not for sale’. Write ‘Fifth Marriage Anniversary’ or ‘Five Blissful Years’ in the main attraction feature placeholder. Your love message for her will become names of the imaginary articles. An imaginary page number should be placed beneath each imaginary article (love message). Choose a background of your liking and give the final touch to the magazine cover.

Custom magazine creation

Getting this custom gift printed will not be difficult, nor will be framing; still, you need to be careful in choosing the printer and the photo framer. Finding a good quality printer and a photo framer will not be difficult. Enter the appropriate keywords, and any of the major search engines will fetch a huge list containing names, addresses and websites of printers as well as photo framers. Ask for the price-list and samples from each of them. Ask each of them to send you printed samples.

The size of the magazine cover should be at least 20X24 inches, if you want it to be visible from a distance.

The Romantic Journey

Everyone has a story to tell, some embarrassing ones and some lovey-dovey kind. Create a beautiful romance journal consisting of all the little stories of how you felt before meeting her, what you did, how you arrange money for the dinner, your appointment with dentist etc. Gifting your girlfriend a personalized romance journal on 2^nd or 3^rd year’s valentine day will thrill your girlfriend. And the fact that you are sharing even those nervous moments of your life with your girlfriend will make her love you more. The romance journal will give a personal account of the things you did from the day you saw and liked her to the day you got together.

Romanticizing the story

The personalized romance journal I am proposing here will prove how human you are. No one likes superman, and no one expect you to be just perfect. Everyone knows you are human, so accepting that you were nervous before meeting her, or you were sweating when talking to her over phone for the first time will prove how honest and how human you are. This is the essence of the Romance Journal I am asking you to create. By removing the layer of superman off you, the journal will uncover the real you.

To create the page layout and over of this super gift, you will need a page designing software like Adobe Indesign or Quark Express. You will also need a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source) to design the cover for the journal as well as to optimize the image, if you are planning to use some.

If you can write beautifully then well and good, but if you cannot, then along with these tools, you will also need help of a professional writer to carve a sculpture from the raw experiences you will provide him written on a sheet of paper or in a word document. Even if you hire a professional writer to do the final writing work, you will have to write down the experiences you had and the thoughts that came to your mind before meeting your beloved. The information you will provide to the writer will work as a raw material from which a beautiful statue of love will be carved for you.

Finding a writer is not difficult, but finding a good writer that meets your need is slightly difficult, but do not lose hope, you will find one. Ask for two or three sample articles before giving the writer the responsibility to write your romance journal. A badly written journal will ruin the effect you want to create. Undertake this activity (writing) at least two months in advance. It will give you enough time to hire another writer, if the first one did not work to your satisfaction. It would be beneficial for you to find a writer who can do the image editing and layout creation work as well. This will save you some good dollars.

The process of creating the personalized gift will begin with writing short accounts of the things that you did to prepare for the date, or the mental notes you took before calling her. You need to write about the little stuffs that seemed important then but now seem completely useless, and even thinking about that embarrasses you. write about your visit to the dentist, or about the tips your friends gave you, or help you sought from experts on the Internet, or the money you borrowed from your friends for the big dinner, or the days you wasted in preparing for the meeting, or the time you spent in thinking what to say after calling her, or about those blank calls that you gave her just to hear her voice, etc.

After the writing is done, hand the written material over to the writer (if you have hired someone to do the final writing). Keep a close eye on the progress, and see if the writer is writing to your satisfaction or not, and if he or she is able to express your true emotion or not.

Meanwhile, you can shortlist the images you want to use at appropriate places in your personal romance journal. You can even use an image for the cover, if you want to put a picture on it. Optimize the selected images and start designing the cover. The design of the cover will depend upon the content of the journal, so first get the journal written, and then go for the cover designing.

You should use a good quality printer to get your journal printed. You can find many good printers on the Internet. Contact them ask for their samples, and rates. I will recommend going for digital printing. Color reproduction in digital printing is better than that in offset or screen printing.