Introduction

When embarking on a new digital publishing project or overhauling an existing one, the choice of layout is crucial for content presentation and user engagement. Choosing between a traditional blog format and a more dynamic magazine-style design can significantly impact how the audience consumes and perceives information. 

This article delves into the intricacies of magazine-style design, particularly in the context of WordPress, the predominant CMS platform, offering insights applicable across various content management systems.

When starting a new project for a newspaper or blog or redesigning one from scratch, you might wonder—what type of template should I choose? Should I choose a blog format (with articles one beneath the other), or should I look for something fancier, like a magazine-style design?

As a note, this usually refers to WordPress CMS, the most used CMS worldwide, especially for blogs and even for some news publishers. But the article applies to pretty much any type of CMS.

The design can be translated into a custom design or a prebuilt template, which is generally shared between more websites, but again, this still needs to change what we are about to say.

What is a magazine-style design?

Generally, a blog has articles one beneath the others. There might be more than a single column, articles with a larger screen estate than others, but a blog lists articles one beneath others. If you want to read the latest blog posts, you read from top to bottom - the top articles are the latest, while the ones at the bottom are the oldest.

Take a look at SparkToro's blog.

There are two columns, with blog posts one beneath the other - this is a classic look for a blog.

Now take a look at BBC's website.

As you scroll down the page, you might see multiple sections, each with important news.

It's a long page with many "this is new" sections.

As you can see, magazine-style websites take a different approach than a classical blog and are a good fit for situations when a lot of news needs to be presented at once.

While a typical blog generally has a single main section, a magazine-style website has a different section, which can contain multiple articles.

Advantages of magazine-style designs

They can look great. Of course, it all depends on the designer's layout, but magazine-style designs often look excellent.

Focus on images. This depends a lot on the design, but generally, magazine-style designs tend to focus on images. Of course, classical blogs can also do this, but we found it's more often happening with magazine-style designs.

Disadvantages of magazine-style designs

They can take more work to build and maintain. Again, it all depends on the context, but implementing a magazine-style website may be more complex than using a general blog layout.

When to use a magazine-style theme?

This is the most critical point of the current article as we view it.

We find many websites wanting to look great, give a good first impression, and use magazine-style layouts– but there's a prerequisite for using a magazine-style theme: you must have a lot of daily content.

A website like BBC has a lot of content, and if they used a regular-style blog, whenever you visited bbc.com, you would only see the latest content. But this might make you miss what's crucial that day.

Instead, BBC uses a magazine-style layout, and it fits them well. They have multiple sections, each with "this is important" articles. It's easy to find and read something meaningful on their website.

But if BBC only created 2-3 daily articles, a blog-style layout might fit them better.

Yet, in our daily practice at Slicedbread, we occasionally find blogs that want to impress their readers and use a magazine-style layout. Generally, it doesn't fit them.

Conclusion

Selecting the appropriate layout for your digital publication hinges on the volume and nature of your content. With their multi sectional and image-centric layouts, magazine-style designs are ideally suited for content-rich websites like news portals that require simultaneous presentation of numerous updates. 

However, a more straightforward blog format might be more effective for blogs with limited daily content. Understanding your content and audience's unique demands is key to choosing a design that enhances readability, engagement, and overall user experience.

You can always ask Slicedbread Agency for creative development services, and we'll be happy to help you with your next online venture.