I have always liked presenting ideas in the form of a magazine cover. It can act as a stimulating writing prompt for other people, and it can also serve to help you focus on some key ideas. But most of all, it’s just enjoyable in its own right!

Other uses of a magazine cover such as the one shown below are:

As a mock-up for a real magazine: you can try out different ideas for no cost, apart from time of course.
As a way of indicating what forthcoming blog posts are going to be about.
As an electronic front cover for an online newsletter.

Here’s how to go about it.

1. Get a picture ready. This can be either on your hard drive, in Facebook, or on Flickr. (To use Flickr, see Making use of your photographs).

2. Go to the Big Huge Labs Magazine Cover page. As you can see from the screenshot, this presents you with the means to load up a picture.

Upload or select the photo you wish to use for the background It also provides you with a template on which to place your magazine cover stories’ headlines.

The template not only provides you with spaces in which to write your story headlines, but shows you (on the right-hand side) where the headlines will appear and how large they are

Enter the text of your story headlines

And you change the font and its characteristics, like colour:

3. When you are finished, click Create at the bottom of the screen.

You may find, like I did, that it takes a bit of trial and error to get the headlines right. If you’re not careful, you can end up with there being too many words to fit in at that particular size. Whatever you do, don't click the Back button on your browser, because you’ll lose everything. (I write from experience here!). Instead, click the Edit button and take it from there.

Once you have finished, you can edit, save or share your magazine cover