Ade Malsasa Akbar contact
Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.
Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 01:00

As I said yesterday, I will share how to create magazine cover layout in Scribus. This thing has a little difference compared to internal page layout. You will need a large image as background, a magazine logo, and some icons. Of course I write this tutorial based on my digital magazine I've mentioned. Believe me. It is easy while you know the workflow in Scribus. Enjoy.



Ingredients

 

  • Scribus
  • Properties (F2), Text Frame (T), Link Text Frame (N), Insert Image Frame (I)
  • FreeSans, DroidSans, DejaVu Sans
  • A large picture (PNG)
  • A magazine logo (PNG)
  • Some icons (PNG)
  • Small is beautiful
  • Focus on the blank spaces, not the contents
  • Don't think Scribus as Libreoffice Writer, they are too different
  • Pen and paper
All files you need are available to download here (20 MB, Mediafire).

Sketching

 

Same like yesterday. Sketch on your paper a concept layout design like this.





Putting Background

 

Click Insert Image Frame > make it full of inner margin > Ctrl+I > select your large image.



Putting Text Boxes

 

Create text boxes (Scribus calls it text frame) based on your sketch. These will placed atop your background image. You will see the result like this.




Type Text

 

Put the text of titles you want into every text box.


Format Text

 

Make it bigger and nearer. Give it FreeSans. Give it 72pt in size. Give it Yellow color from Color & Effects section. Use F2 > Text >  Advanced Settings > Manual Tracking > set -12%. See picture below.



Putting Magazine Logo

 

Now, we should give it magazine logo. Place an image box on top. Scribus calls it Image Frame. Click Insert Image Frame > place it on top of page > Ctrl+I > select image. See picture below.



Putting Another Logos

 

See example. We need two more logos. Place image frame > Ctrl+I > select icon. Place it properly on top of text. See result below.


Eyecandies

 

You have the basic. Now, put another text boxes to fill the blanks. See the final result as below:


Credits 

 

  • KDE logo and Lamp logo is from Oxygen Iconset, they are copyrighted works from Oxygen Project.
  • FreeSans, DejavuSans, and DroidSans are copyrighted fonts from respective authors.