[MissMagAddict]

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Always use a wind machine:
"One of the things that's crucial is hair," said Allure's Linda Wells (she means on the head, not the upper lip). "Not only abundant hair, but the blowing hair is good for us." The length of hair isn't as important, added Wells, as long as it's moving. "The worst thing we can do is a really tight, pulled-back style or a hat." Both would only appear on the cover, said Wells, "if I wanted to commit career suicide."

Don't forget the "sparkle":
But hats can work for Seventeen. On that title's covers, every star wears an interesting piece of jewelry, a hat, a scarf or some other dramatic accessory. "Every cover has to have the doodad," said editor in chief Ann Shoket. "That is, a piece of jewelry, or [April 2007 cover girl] Avril Lavigne's glove — something that catches your eye in the visual, but also something in the cover line that catches your eye." Shoket also grabs the reader with the text through visual accoutrements. "I'm taxing the design director to her limits on how many creative doodads she can come up with — burst brackets, shadow stickers. If you look at Marie Claire, which has beautiful covers, it's one font, it's very clean and very neat. We are not clean."

Don't sweat the small stuff:
Nine-point or eight-point type? Serif or sans serif fonts? Often, the devil is in the details. Robert Safian, editor of Fast Company, believes it is more important to get the overall image or story right than to sweat the small details. "The big discussions on covers are Cher versus 'Star Wars,' versus white or color backgrounds."

When in doubt, reach in the cupboard:
Celebrity magazines turn to packages on slow news weeks — Hollywood pregnancies, hottest couples or best celebrity weddings are common. "I call them 'cans of navy bean soup.' We need those cans of bean soup in the cupboard," said People managing editor Larry Hackett. Some "soup" features that the Time Inc. weekly has done this year include "The World's Richest Teens" and the popular "Half Their Size" franchise, which has sold so well that People publishes a double issue every January devoted to the topic. But Hackett recommended using packages sparingly. "Readers are smarter and savvier and more demanding than they were in the past. They want news, they want freshness. When they see those roundups, they say, 'Hmm, they really don't have anything this week.' You have to make them yummy enough that people want to buy them

Finally, a great cover is one that's edible:
"My sense of a good cover that will sell well is if I want to lick it," said Cosmo's White. "And the Beyoncé [December 2007] cover I licked several times...before the sun came up." Another sign that a cover is a winner? "If I dance with it, or if I feel the urge to make out with it, then I'm like, 'Wow, it works!'"