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.

Personalized gift idea

You can provide many reasons, if “why do you give a gift” question is asked, but each one of us will at least agree when I say, we gift because we care for the recipient, or at least we want to convey that we care for them. The super gift I am suggesting here will do exactly that. It will tell your beloved how much you care for her, and to what length you can go for her. I am asking you to make her birthday special for her by personalizing her environs. Make her feel special and pampered today.

Personalizing her surroundings

You will not need many tools to create this super gift. All you will need is lots of time and love for your wife. The idea is to make your presence felt on her birthday despite the fact that you are 500 miles away from her fulfilling your official duty. Word of caution: Do not let your plan leak out. If she gets to know about your intention, the fun of giving this gift will be gone. Surprise is the main ingredient. You have to perform as an undercover gifting agent. Take sufficient time in your hand to make her birthday special. You can give this gift even if you are with her, in the city.

Start with morning, and make a list of things she typically does after waking up. See what all you can modify. If she wakes up and goes directly to the bathroom to wash her face, a surprise should be waiting for her near the bathroom’s wash basin. A message like, “Good morning honey, you look beautiful today. Happy birthday! A tight hug!” could be placed there. If her second step is to fetch water from refrigerator, a rose with your message should be waiting there to greet her good morning. If this step is followed by going to kitchen for tea, a card, or just a message saying how much you miss her tea today should be placed beneath the tea container.

Make a list of the work she does in the afternoon, evening and night; at office, at home and see what all you can customize. Do not rush to wish her happy birthday yet, let the gift culminate up to a very warm happy birthday in the night. You should not forget to customize her cell phone ring tone, alarm clock, landline’s ringtone, and also leave a warm message in the answering machine preprogrammed to play when she leaves for work. The car she drives should have an I love you card waiting on the driving seat, and her music player should also play your message followed by her favorite music (or the music that has a romantic value for both of you) once she turns the ignition on.

Send flowers to her office and a big cake to your home in the evening. Ask her friends to send her your love, when she reaches office. You can also ask her cell phone company to call her and greet her, and to play her favorite tune after calling her. Arrange for sweet, lovely message as well. You can buy a short messaging pack and ask the seller to send her some beautiful messages at sporadic intervals. This custom gift will keep her happy and entertained throughout the day. She will feel, you are right there, beside her, all day, despite your being out of town on business.

Her day should culminate on your calling her, just after she enters home and sees the cake. Call her and just say, “Happy Birthday”. It will do the magic, her eyes will become moist, her voice will quiver, and her heart will be over joyous.

You can also think of installing 2-3 cameras one each in the bedroom, kitchen and living room to record her expressions and reactions. Preprogram the camera based on her daily routine, and watch the recoding with her once you are back. On the cost of repeating I must say: surprise is the key element of this personalized super gift. If the plan is leaked, the super gift will not have the desired effect.

This personalized romantic gift consists of two parts: form and substance (read content). I will begin with discussing substance (content) of this super gift and will move forward towards describing the form.

Writing letter (substance)

More than anything, what’s the content of the message delivered in the bottle will matter more to your girl; hence, you need to cherry-pick the words for the personal message. In this case, focus more on the depth of the message and the eloquence of the writing style, instead of focusing on the length of the message.

The core essence of the message could be a plain heart-felt “I love you”, or it could be “I wanted to say how much I missed you since yesterday evening, when we last met”. Do not make the letter look run of the mill. Letter should not imitate the mechanical phrases written on any greeting card. Make the letter personal as if you have poured your heart into every word written there.

You can use an old-looking paper or a parchment paper to write the personal message, and if you wish you can carefully burn the edge on any one side of the scroll to give the letter an authentic “old world” and “shipwrecked” feel. You can even submerge it into yellowish muddy water to give it a more authentic look.

Crafting bottle (form)

The bottle in which the message will be delivered is not only a delivery vehicle in this case, but it is an integral part of the message. The beauty of the bottle will express how much effort you put in to create this beautiful super gift; hence you should carefully choose the shape of the bottle you will use to deliver the message. Craft a short but elegant personal message and get it laser engraved on the surface of the bottle. Purchase a nice cork, a big alloy key, and also collect some sands, shells and pebbles that will go inside the bottle.

Getting a personal message engraved on the bottle’s surface is not a big deal. You can easily find a person or shop that does laser engraving. You can also search the Internet for the same, and for the bottle, you should visit the antique shop in your city. Alternatively, you can purchase the bottle from online Antique shop. I will suggest going for a fancy-shaped bottle. I would prefer a colorless Egyptian looking bottle. A colored bottle with distinct shape will also serve the purpose. This is basically a matter of personal choice.

Message in the bottle (bringing form and substance together)

First, take the letter with the personalized message and roll it into a scroll. Use a fancy ribbon to tie a knot around it. Keep this letter aside, and take sand, pebbles and shells. Put them inside the bottle. Now it’s time to put the scroll inside before corking it up. Wrap the super gift either in a red, shiny satin, or put it in a red velvet pouch. You can also use red, transparent wrapping plastic.

Instead of using decorative ribbon, you should hang the big alloy key, the key to your heart, in a gold chain or a golden string coiled around the neck of the bottle to make this personalized gift more romantic.

To make the romantic gift more special, you can also consider getting your name and “key to my heart” embossed on the key. This obviously depends upon your taste and your budget.

Concept

How many times did you tell your father how much you love him; what he means to you, and how much you think about him and about what all he did for you? On this Father’s day, say everything you ever wanted to say through a custom made comic book. This super gift will tell your father what a great father he has been so far!

Storyboard

The process of custom comic book creation begins with writing down the things you want to say to your father. Do not write everything that happened while you were growing up; talk about those situations or incidence when your father played a vital role.

Talk about the walks you took with him as a kid when you visited your grandparents. Tell him how much those walks meant to you, and how those walks and several other chit chats helped you understand your life better. Talk about the birthday gifts he gave you. Talk about the sleepless nights he spent by your bedside when you were ill. Tell him that he was your childhood hero. Tell him how you always imitated him while playing games with friends. Tell him, for you, how important are the time that you spent together? Tell him how much you care for him. Say thank you to your father on this Father’s Day through this personalized gift.

Your comic book can include everything said above, or just one or two incidences that explains how much you care for him, and how much he means to you. This custom gift could be of either 4-6 pages or 12-16 pages, or even more. The thickness of the comic book will essentially depend upon the kind of money you want to spend on this super gift.

Dialogues & Characters

The closer you will get to the end of the previous section, the clearer the storyline will become. Now, it is time to do some dialogue writing. As you know, comics are kind of movie storyboards: a visual storytelling device. Hence, unlike in stories, less and less of narration and more and more interpersonal dialogues are used in a comic book. Before writing dialogues for you and your father, who are in the lead role, you will need to consider the role of minor characters as well, and how many of them will be present in your comic book.

Always remember to keep the dialogue part as natural as you can. The word spoken by the character in your comic book should resemble the actual word spoken in day-to-day life by the people you are personifying in the comic book.

Illustration

Unlike the last two sections, which will be done completely by you, you will need help of professional illustrator to do the next section. You can do the illustration yourself, if you know the art of illustration, and if you are not the illustration type, you can seek help of any professional illustrator. Finding one will not be difficult. Do not forget to check the work experience of the illustrator before giving him the illustration job. Ascertain that he is fluent with illustration software like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc. as you will need the illustration in digital format for printing,

You will need to provide your childhood pictures, pictures of your father when you were young as well as the pictures of other characters and of locations in which the story is set to put the comic book in the proper context.

Illustrator will take time to create the comic book. Meanwhile, you can search for the printers. You must see the sample works of different printers before trusting him with the creation of this personalized super gift. You can search the Internet and local business directory for quality printers in your locality. You can also seek help of web-based printing companies to get the comic book printed.

NOTE: For convenience’s sake, and to keep the article legible, I have used the pronoun “He, himself, and his” at place where I wanted to use “He or she, himself/herself, and his/her”. You can give this gift to your daughter as well on her marriage.

The first step idea

Marriage is your son or daughter’s first step in the new life where he will meet new people, new happiness, new opportunities, new thrill, new compromises, new challenges, etc. This is the best time to tell him about how to shoulder new responsibility, and to stay as cheerful and smiling as he has ever been. And to make him understand this, what could be a better way than telling him about the success he himself had at various junctures in life! Gift him an account of all the first steps he took in his life in the form of a beautifully constructed The First Step Journal.

The first step explained

To do the technical work required for this personalized gift, you will need a page designing software like Adobe Indesign, or Quark Express to design the pages of The First Step Journal, and you will need any image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source) to do the photo retouching and enhancement work.

For the content of this super gift,  you will need a recollection of every first step that your son took: the day when your kid came to this world; the first day when he crawled; the day when he took his first step; the day when he first spoke; the day when he called you dad/mom; his first birthday; his first day at school; the day when he won a cup/medal in sports; the day when he became an adult; his first vacation with family; his first day in college; the day when he graduated; his first day in office etc.

Along with this, you will also need a collection of photographs of your son taken at different junctures of his life. You can include the picture you clicked on different occasions: when he was born; on his first birthday; when he took his first step; on his first family vacation; on his graduation day, etc. In short, I am asking you to collect the pictures of all the “first step” occasions of your son’s life. If you do not have pictures of every occasion then you can replace it with a picture clicked on a nearby date or in the same month or maybe in the same year.

Select the pictures and occasions you want to include in the first step journal, and begin working on it. Start with creating a layout for the journal pages because this will give you a tentative idea about the size of the image to use, and how many words will comfortably fit in the layout alongside the image. After finalizing the layout, begin with writing “the first step” pages. Use a language that mimic a combination of greetings-card style and motivational writing. This step should be followed by optimizing the image for the journal.

Put everything in the layout and recheck everything, and the journal is ready for printing, but before going for printing, let’s have a word about the quality of paper, quality of cover page and the binding. I will suggest you to use high-quality matt finished photo papers for the journal pages, and will also suggest you to get it laminated once the printing is done. For cover, you can use a velvety paper, or slightly thin, glossy card-board paper. Just write the words like “The First Step Journal – your journey so far…. On the Occasion, when you are about to Begin Your Life’s Most Important Journey. With Best Wishes from Your Mom and Dad.”

The work is complete, now search for a good quality printer and get the journal printed.  There are good quality web-based printers available that do remarkable job. I will recommend digital printing for the purpose.