I have been receiving lately many emails and messages with question, what program do I use to create my online magazine?

Well, I started with Indesign, as everyone mentioned, that it was the only professional program to design a magazine. So I purchased it (monthly subscription) and I also bought a magazine layout. I did not have a clue how to actually use it, and it turned out that this program was way more complicated, I primarily thought. I spent hours to look for YouTube tutorials but in the end, I simply got lost in details.

One day, a friend of mine introduced me to Canva – a free, online, graphic-design tool, which uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. It was like a bull’s eye! This tool literally saved my life.  I started to spend hours to create designs, which later I was uploading to my blog posts. I think, I have never worked with more user – friendly program. Apart blogs posts, I have been creating in Canva many graphics which I shared on my social media, like Facebook and Instagram. After weeks of testing this tool, I decided to create there, my first online magazine and luckily, Canva offered free magazine layouts as well. I could not really believe I had so many options. Great fonts, many free illustrations, which I could easily drag-and-drop plus amazing palette of colors to pick.

Another great thing about this tool was a big variety of designs, which you could select. If my magazine was more about underground parts of Budapest, I was able to choose a bit ‘darker’ layouts or colors. When I focused more on fashion, I was trying to select designs which match this topic, along with colors or illustrations.

My magazine has always 60 pages, and for that I need to create two, separate designs (Canva allows you to have 30 pages in one design), which are later converted to pdf. Once all is ready, a friend of mine is simply uploading it to my website.  The quality is so good, that in the past I printed this magazine and distributed to various coffee shops in Budapest downtown. You would never believe, that any magazine could be produce in such a simple way.

If you need somebody, who could create  visual arts or consult your project, do not hesitate to contact me!

What type of online tools, do you use or can recommend to create great designs?

Do share your experiences.

 

2 Comments

  1. Hi The Spoiled Queen,
    Thanks for sharing this informative post!
    I prefer to use InDesign and Photoshop, and for charts and diagrams I usually use Visio. I’ve never used Canva but it seems that this tool is a great companion in creating infographics. Looking forward to reading your other hacks 🙂
    Best wishes,
    Liudmila

    • thespoiledqueen Reply

      Hi,

      yes it’s really useful tool, you can create so many things there and it’s for free! 🙂

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