1. color
The choice and collocation of colors are of great significance to the cover. Color is the most active factor in visual communication and an important element in the cover design of academic journals. The symbolism and communication power of color will affect the final communication effect of periodicals. Therefore, the application of color should not only beautify the cover of periodicals, but also be rigorous. Only proper color expression and artistic treatment can leave a strong impression on readers' vision. The choice of color should consider the needs of periodical content, and express different contents and ideas with the effect of different color contrast. Maintain harmony through comparison and seek development through unity. Taking the color application of periodical titles as an example, first of all, the color of periodical titles must have a certain weight on the cover, and it is an effective method to adopt high purity and highlight contrast. Secondly, the distribution of color areas can also greatly affect the performance of color. Of course, it is unscientific to talk about color independently. Designers should treat the meaning of color, color collocation and graphics dialectically as a whole. The cover of academic journals should not be exaggerated, but should reflect the seriousness of academics and meet the aesthetic taste of academic readers. The whole design should be elegant, bookish and create a unique academic atmosphere.
2. Cover picture
Cover pictures have the characteristics of intuition, clarity and strong visual impact, and become an important part of design elements. The core of the cover is to create a graphic composition with distinctive personality style. Pictures include realistic graphics and freehand graphics (such as Chinese painting, China calligraphy, art ceramics, oil painting and sculpture). Try to highlight the theme with concise, vivid and meaningful pictures and express the external artistic image of academic journals. For example, the cover of Shandong Water Conservancy magazine mainly focuses on the natural scenery of water conservancy projects. The cover photos of each issue should be combined with the current focus of water conservancy work, achievements in water conservancy construction, new scientific and technological achievements, water culture, water conservancy construction scenes and other photos, which can generally be used alone or combined with scenery photos. (3) The cover of Anhui Geology takes Huangshan Mountain as the background, which reflects the theme and running direction of the journal with pictures, revealing that the journal is a professional journal showing Anhui geological and mineral resources.
3. Cover text
The cover should use standard words and symbols. The fonts commonly used in periodical titles are divided into three categories: calligraphy, art and printing. Calligraphy has a strong artistic appeal, because it is mostly written by celebrities and has a celebrity effect. For example, the title of Business Studies was inscribed by Guo Moruo. Artistic style is the most widely used font in periodical title design, which can be divided into regular artistic style and irregular artistic style. Printing follows the characteristics of conventional artistic style, and with the help of computers, printing processing methods are convenient and rich. Therefore, it is very common to use printed titles in academic journals, especially the extensive use of computers, and the types of fonts in computer fonts have increased a lot. Many periodicals choose regular script, running script and official script in computer font.
The main function of the cover of academic journals is to build a visual bridge for transmitting information between readers and journals. The visual art of characters is the first element of artistic modeling. Different fonts have different independence and give people different visual feelings. Taking the title as the core, including other fixed designs on the cover, is the distinguishing factor that distinguishes this publication from other publications, the visual expression of the periodical brand, and the most important part of the overall visual identification system of the publication. The cover design of periodicals should be concise, beautiful and generous, which can be abstract or concrete. The visual elements include words and numbers, such as publication name, standard serial publication number, issue number, dots, lines, plane patterns, pictures and other decorative symbols that form the cover background. There are few pictures in the cover design of academic journals. Generally, the pictures closely related to the periodical content are selected to participate in the composition and fixed in the composition of the cover. For example, the cover of the Journal of Oceanography (English version) is very distinctive, with a pure blue background, white English letters in the middle of the upper part of the cover, and beautiful waves of 1/2 in the lower part of the cover. The whole cover looks elegant and generous.