Digital tablets like the iPad offer a completely new canvas for editorial designers. Andrew Losowsky asks its early adopters to share their experiences so far in this brave new world.
Trailblazed by the iPad, with others reportedly mere months from release, tablets promise much. As Mike Haney, executive editor of Popular Science, points out, the tablet is "the first device that is small enough, and all-screen enough, to let you sit and lean back with it, as you would with a print magazine."
However, these are very early days. The format is new, and everything is up for grabs - it's an exciting time for editorial publishers. But it's a confusing time for readers. It doesn't help that every publication is trying something different, while attempting to establish a consistent gesture vocabulary for the industry. To bring up a contextual menu in Popular Science, for example, the reader must perform an upward two-finger stroke. Sports Illustrated, meanwhile, demands a one-finger press-and-hold; while a two-finger pinch on a Zinio magazine app zooms in and out, and in Time's vertical mode, that gesture changes the font size.
The only design element that's close to uniform so far is the use of miniature spreads to represent an issue's contents - but even that isn't consistently applied. Some of the early adopters have learned a great deal already about how readers interact with tablet publications. Popular Science was one of the first magazines available on the iPad, and was described by Steve Jobs as "really, really breakthrough". Its creation began several months before the magazine's publisher, Bonnier, even knew of the iPad's existence. Like a handful of other publishers, they had commissioned a design studio - in their case, London-based BERG - to imagine how magazines could be realised on a hitherto non-existent, but widely rumoured, tablet format. A prototype video of their creation, Mag+, was put on the web six weeks before the iPad was announced, to much acclaim.
Bonnier and BERG spent a long time thinking about what a digital magazine should be, deciding what qualities were important to keep from the print edition, and what principles should guide the process. "Once all of that hard groundwork is in place, you can then take those principles and apply them to specific design questions," says Haney.
What the team created was a publication that, unlike other iPad magazine apps, works with layers instead of frames. The main image for most stories appears as a background image, while the text scrolls vertically in a semi-translucent box. To make the text disappear and reappear, the reader simply presses the background image. Though this means that striking images can seem lost behind the text on the initial view, Haney says that the system has many advantages.
"With layers, the relationship between the images and the text can be dynamic, so my canvas isn't limited to whatever the screen dimensions are. I can keep the same image on the background for a thousand words flowing over it, because that's the image that fits with this section of the story. The other thing it lets the reader do is see the background image with a simple tap, rather than have to decide between reading a story and viewing a slideshow via a bunch of taps. It's challenging to design for because it's a different totally paradigm to what you're accustomed to, but once you get into it, it's really fun and really powerful."
Another early arrival on the iPad was Time, which launched, according to design director DW Pine III, exactly "40 days and nights" from the iPad's introduction. "We called it Project Noah," he laughs. "In that time, we virtually started from scratch to produce a weekly iPad magazine that maintained the look and feel of Time, while also utilising this new platform. Each day, the technology team discovered new ways to make it work, while we focused on the content, packaging, pacing and workflow."
In Time's case, the technology team was made up of two outside companies: WoodWing, which created Time's print publishing system; and Wonderfactory, a digital design company. According to Wonderfactory's creative director, Jared Cocken, they began with a series of questions: What was the core idea? What was the business strategy? What was the user experience? What would the hardware be capable of? How would publishing teams design for this new format, especially on a weekly basis? Was there a market for the content, and what was the audience looking for?
Once these had been answered, there was still much to consider beyond basic page layout: "You need to build two components for your users - a reading interface, and the content that resides inside it," Cocken explains. "It's similar to the relationship between a browser and a website. One is a shell that has global functions that allow you to move between pages, and the other is the content that you're navigating to. The browser, or reader, shouldn't get in the way of the content."
The original plan was that it would only be read with the iPad held horizontally. "Most of our photography is horizontal," says Pine, "and we were used to magazine spreads. However, when we actually held an iPad, we noticed that we mainly held the device vertically. So, with a week to go, we had to come up with a vertical solution. That said, I think users interact with it in different ways - some always vertical, some always horizontal, and some like to rotate it per story to see which provides the best experience."
Although the content is pretty much identical, the different orientations of the Time app are quite distinctive. The portrait mode feels more text-heavy, with smaller images. It also allows the reader to change the font size of the single-column text blocks. Most landscape designs, however, contain two-column fixed-size text, more full-screen images and video.
The iPad edition goes further than just retooling the print edition. "We average more than 10 videos a week," says Pine. "We also have dozens of extra photos each week, and we created a section called TimeFrames (the five best pictures of the week) that we don't do in print."
As a daily paper, The Times has a more immediate challenge in translating its content at short notice. Design director Jon Hill opted for a grid that would feel familiar for its readers - three-column in portrait, four-column in landscape, with single-column leaders and opinion pieces - which means that copy doesn't fit neatly to the end of each page.
"It was more important that our journalism retained its authority, and the reader felt the weight of its 225-year legacy," Hill explains. "Pages that look similar to a newspaper on the screen will hopefully reassure readers that they're getting the full Times experience.
"Increasingly, material such as video, audio, infographics and slideshows are researched and commissioned for the website and the app. The device offers so many opportunities for interaction, and an increasingly curious audience will demand more and more. A straight, 500-word story will not be as well received as a story with supporting pictures, videos or graphics."
In retrospect, Hill wishes that they hadn't bothered designing for both orientations. "We'll see more apps that behave completely differently depending on the orientation, rather than try and replicate content for both," he says.
Other publishers want a tablet presence, but prefer a middle way in the short-term through a third-party provider such as Zinio, which hosts tablet editions of leading publications such as Total Film, T3 and Digital Camera, not to mention Computer Arts' very own Book of Inspiration and Creative Pro's Guide to iPad, with the magazine itself due to follow very soon.
In many cases, these are little more than browsable PDFs but, according to Zinio's chief marketing officer Jeanniey Mullen, it advises its clients' designers to "think about why the owner of the iPad bought the device - entertainment and access - and then consider how your magazine can drive that forward.
"The most successful iPad magazines are those that think about intelligent ways to update their layout, like adding extra photos or strategically supplementing content," she continues.
Zinio offers its clients a checklist of 'best practices' to help attract readers, including animating covers, and ensuring at least 10 interactive elements in every issue. However, Mullen also advises that all designers think beyond the iPad: "It's just the tip of the innovation iceberg."
Magazine designer Jeremy Leslie is currently working on designs for a tablet edition of a mainstream title, as well as the launch of a standalone magazine app. "iPad mags are all flawed in some way, but things will improve," he asserts. "Creatively, it's definitely a real challenge - but a very exciting one.
"As ever, as a designer you're stuck between the need to hit schedule and budget, while doing the best design possible. So same as usual, except there are no rules about what is and isn't good design. You can bring elements of print design and web design, but really this is a new thing altogether."
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
OUGD601 // Dissertation // The change from book to ebook
The transition from book to eBook has been relatively easy to grasp. eBook readers offer a literal translation of turning the pages on a simple digital device. When the iPad launched in 2009, however, a plethora of publishers and developers began experimenting with book content in the app space. These so-called ‘coffee table’ apps re-imagine the book in new multimedia formats, but they’re only one part of the story.
Touch Press and Faber’s early collaboration on the Solar System iPad app saw best-selling author Marcus Chown taking the user, or reader, on a tour of our cosmic backyard, with more than 150 pages made of beautiful interactive scenes, 3D objects and videos. Many asked if this was a multimedia project with book content, or a digital book with multimedia content. The same collaborators later released TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ for iPad, which might be more comfortably described as a ‘book’. Even with a wealth of interactive features, the text, and its various interpretations, is so central to the app. Interestingly, Touch Press has always described its projects as ‘books’.
This summer, Heuristic’s award-winning London: A City Through Time iPad app challenged our interpretation of ‘book’, taking Pan Macmillan’s The London Encyclopedia as its base and throwing in a three-tiered timeline, panoramas of the city, audio tours, rare photographs and amazing video documentaries. The challenge for the designers and developers involved in the project was ensuring readers could easily find their way through all the content.
In the children’s market particularly, the lines between ‘book’ and ‘game’ are blurring. New publishers like Nosy Crow and Me Books have worked hard to create digital books that get children to simultaneously read, play and learn. A new range of ‘storyworlds’ is being created for kids with publishers trying hard to adopt a Moshi Monster approach to try to engage children with the story.
Debate over the future of the book was raised again in the summer with the Fifty Shades phenomenon, but in fact the discussion has been going on for decades. In 1993, author Douglas Adams (the first person to buy a Macintosh in the UK), said prophetically: “All the things anybody liked about previous types of books – pictures, text, scrolling, page turning – could be modelled in software and you could take as many books as you wanted, anywhere you liked.”
New book formats have become part of our reading lives, and are simultaneously creating opportunities and challenges to the publishing industry. Publishers are faced with the choice of bringing the skillset of developers, interactive designers and animators in-house, or outsourcing this expertise. How readers find these new book products creates another set of complications. With so many apps in the App Store, how can publishers ensure their wares stand out? And, when you’re marketing a multimedia app at £9.99, how do you justify the price to consumers when so many other apps are only 69p? There is so much competition that outstanding design and thoughtful user experience are more essential than ever.
So, what can we expect to see in 2013? It’s likely that the continued convergence of media will see a new breed of publishers and publishing emerging.
The merger between Penguin and Random House will no doubt create a superpower publisher, but innovative publishing models are certain to challenge the traditional ones. Companies like And Other Stories and Unbound are already using technology to form democratic and crowd-sourced input into the publishing process.
In 2013 we’re likely to see much more experimental participation from the writers themselves, and we expect to see many more teaming up directly with technologists to create new kinds of work. With highbrow, prize-winning literary authors like Margaret Atwood experimenting on fan-fiction writing platforms like Wattpad, the floodgate of writers looking to explore this new digital world is opening.
Authors will want to collaborate directly with designers, animators and technologists, and vice versa. And we’ll see many projects initiated by designers, animators and technologists bringing their creative instincts and experience to the storytelling arena. These innovative approaches to content are what we’ll be looking to cover with the most interest through 2013.
OUGD601 // Dissertation // iPad vs CS5
Genuine revolutions in publishing don't happen often, but Adobe has big plans for the iPad and potentially for other tablet devices too.
While a lot of readers like print - it's convenient, portable and it works anywhere that isn't dark - it's also limited in obvious ways: you can't animate paper, you can't embed video, you can't add slide shows, and good colour print is expensive. It's also massively wasteful, with truckloads of newsprint being sourced, printed, distributed, thrown-away, and occasionally recycled, daily.
The iPad and other tablet devices offer a realistic alternative. While the first version of the iPad can be criticised for its weight and relatively low screen resolution, it's a good bet that future models will be slimmer and lighter. They're also likely to have an updated and larger version of the iPhone's excellent retina display. More importantly, the iPad and its competitors already have enough memory to store tens of thousands of pages of content, all in a single portable device.
A design environment for the iPad is the proverbial no-brainer, and Adobe has recently been previewing its Digital Publishing Platform project. Most print designers work with InDesign, so DCB (digital content bundler) works as an InDesign add-on. You can keep all of your familiar design and layout skills, but extend them by adding new media.
Because Apple has killed all apps that aren't built using its Xcode development tools, the core of DCB is an Apple-compliant Digital Content Viewer app. This is a generic shell app, very much like a PDF reader, but with extended features. Instead of saving a DCB project as a PDF, the content is compressed into a new .issue format which includes standard static content layout information but also embeds links to new content types. The reader loads the .issue file into the viewer, and they can flip through pages in the usual way, exploring the new content types when they're available. Unlike the ePub format, which reflows text to suit the viewer's window dimensions, the format assumes a fixed window size and layout.
The first outing for DCB was a new iPad edition of Wired magazine with slideshows, video clips and a rotating animation. The edition was a success, gaining massive attention. InDesign's print metaphor is a more flexible and responsive medium than the awkward, buggy and non-standard standards that rule the web. The InDesign workflow is likely to be simpler and more efficient, and it may be possible to dual-purpose print and iPad design with minor modifications. But the trade-off is a proprietary format that may lock designers into a certain technology, may limit what's possible in the future, and doesn't necessarily offer an experience that can't be duplicated or improved online.
Currently the range of extended content types is very restricted. There's no full-fat Flash or AIR support, so it's impossible to create completely customised and open user experiences. Basic slideshows, video embedding and simple animations aren't quite the last word in creative design: Adobe is hoping to extend the options in future. But without open Flash/AIR support, designers may be forced into a paper-with-extras idiom; a more open platform could enable more creative explorations.
There are also political issues to consider. It's not clear yet if Apple is going to allow the Digital Publishing Platform to proceed. Apple may also decide to lock out certain key technologies; Steve Jobs is notorious for his dislike of Flash, and he may shift the goal posts to lock out a possible Flash-by-the-back-door technology. It's also not clear if content will be available outside the App Store, or if Apple will try to monopolise distribution.
These may be reasons why DCB is running behind schedule. A public beta was promised for late August, but hadn't yet appeared as Computer Arts went to press. We'll be covering it in more detail as and when it does. Until then, it's worth keeping an eye on the technology, which is going to transform the industry.
The Digital Publishing Platform Workflow
In its current pre-beta form, the Digital Publishing Platform extensions appear as extra tabs at the right of InDesign's layout pages. When you create a page layout, you can define frames and grids in the usual way and then drop the new media types into them. For video content, this is as easy as dragging and dropping the video into position on the grid. The video must be pre-edited, and it's not clear yet which codecs, formats and standards will be supported. But transcoding is a relatively trivial problem. From the designer's point of view, the video is added just like an image file, but it appears in the final layout with an icon that the user can tap to play it.
The slideshow option is very simple. In the demonstration projects it appears as a full-size image viewer box with optional adjacent thumbnails. To populate the boxes, drag image content to fill them. In the final project, the viewer automatically displays an image in the viewer box when the user taps a thumbnail.
The most open-ended feature is the proposed AIR player. In the demonstration project this displays a flick-book style rotating animation, which can be added to the grid in the standard way. Potentially, other kinds of customised content may eventually be possible.
While a lot of readers like print - it's convenient, portable and it works anywhere that isn't dark - it's also limited in obvious ways: you can't animate paper, you can't embed video, you can't add slide shows, and good colour print is expensive. It's also massively wasteful, with truckloads of newsprint being sourced, printed, distributed, thrown-away, and occasionally recycled, daily.
The iPad and other tablet devices offer a realistic alternative. While the first version of the iPad can be criticised for its weight and relatively low screen resolution, it's a good bet that future models will be slimmer and lighter. They're also likely to have an updated and larger version of the iPhone's excellent retina display. More importantly, the iPad and its competitors already have enough memory to store tens of thousands of pages of content, all in a single portable device.
A design environment for the iPad is the proverbial no-brainer, and Adobe has recently been previewing its Digital Publishing Platform project. Most print designers work with InDesign, so DCB (digital content bundler) works as an InDesign add-on. You can keep all of your familiar design and layout skills, but extend them by adding new media.
Because Apple has killed all apps that aren't built using its Xcode development tools, the core of DCB is an Apple-compliant Digital Content Viewer app. This is a generic shell app, very much like a PDF reader, but with extended features. Instead of saving a DCB project as a PDF, the content is compressed into a new .issue format which includes standard static content layout information but also embeds links to new content types. The reader loads the .issue file into the viewer, and they can flip through pages in the usual way, exploring the new content types when they're available. Unlike the ePub format, which reflows text to suit the viewer's window dimensions, the format assumes a fixed window size and layout.
The first outing for DCB was a new iPad edition of Wired magazine with slideshows, video clips and a rotating animation. The edition was a success, gaining massive attention. InDesign's print metaphor is a more flexible and responsive medium than the awkward, buggy and non-standard standards that rule the web. The InDesign workflow is likely to be simpler and more efficient, and it may be possible to dual-purpose print and iPad design with minor modifications. But the trade-off is a proprietary format that may lock designers into a certain technology, may limit what's possible in the future, and doesn't necessarily offer an experience that can't be duplicated or improved online.
Currently the range of extended content types is very restricted. There's no full-fat Flash or AIR support, so it's impossible to create completely customised and open user experiences. Basic slideshows, video embedding and simple animations aren't quite the last word in creative design: Adobe is hoping to extend the options in future. But without open Flash/AIR support, designers may be forced into a paper-with-extras idiom; a more open platform could enable more creative explorations.
There are also political issues to consider. It's not clear yet if Apple is going to allow the Digital Publishing Platform to proceed. Apple may also decide to lock out certain key technologies; Steve Jobs is notorious for his dislike of Flash, and he may shift the goal posts to lock out a possible Flash-by-the-back-door technology. It's also not clear if content will be available outside the App Store, or if Apple will try to monopolise distribution.
These may be reasons why DCB is running behind schedule. A public beta was promised for late August, but hadn't yet appeared as Computer Arts went to press. We'll be covering it in more detail as and when it does. Until then, it's worth keeping an eye on the technology, which is going to transform the industry.
The Digital Publishing Platform Workflow
In its current pre-beta form, the Digital Publishing Platform extensions appear as extra tabs at the right of InDesign's layout pages. When you create a page layout, you can define frames and grids in the usual way and then drop the new media types into them. For video content, this is as easy as dragging and dropping the video into position on the grid. The video must be pre-edited, and it's not clear yet which codecs, formats and standards will be supported. But transcoding is a relatively trivial problem. From the designer's point of view, the video is added just like an image file, but it appears in the final layout with an icon that the user can tap to play it.
The slideshow option is very simple. In the demonstration projects it appears as a full-size image viewer box with optional adjacent thumbnails. To populate the boxes, drag image content to fill them. In the final project, the viewer automatically displays an image in the viewer box when the user taps a thumbnail.
The most open-ended feature is the proposed AIR player. In the demonstration project this displays a flick-book style rotating animation, which can be added to the grid in the standard way. Potentially, other kinds of customised content may eventually be possible.
OUGD601 // Dissertation // What's next for digital publishing
As tablet-based publishing steps up, Tom Dennis finds out what new technologies and skillsets are shaping the future of editorial design
If 2010 was the year of the iPad, it was also the year that the publishing industry experimented with digital magazines, and ultimately came up short. The likes of Wired, Vogue and Popular Science might have impressed with their design, but readers were less than enthralled. Large downloads, slow renders and a distinct ambiguity between where and how readers should engage with articles left many underwhelmed. And the numbers didn't make for pretty reading, either.
At the tail end of 2010, a study by Research2Guidance reported that Condé Nast's US Wired iPad magazine sold 73,000 copies when it launched in May 2010. By November, this had fallen to 23,000. Vanity Fair sold 10,500 of its digital edition in October but then 8,700 in November, and GQ's average fell from 13,000 in October to 11,000 in November.
Not only are such figures totally unsustainable for publishers, they also prove that app-based editorial design simply hasn't got it right yet. The same content worked successfully for readers in a print environment, so where has it gone wrong for tablets?
"A lot of presumptions have been proved wrong in digital magazine design," states Information Architects' (iA) Oliver Reichenstein, a renowned user experience (UX) and interactive designer whose own app, Writer, has been celebrated for its tablet suitability. His analysis of the digital publication market on the iA blog is both forthright and rational, and he makes some highly pertinent points on the current trend for digital mimicking print.
"Firstly, the iPad is not a 'lean back' medium; 'lean forward' music apps work perfectly well on it," he says. "Two, people can live without flipping pages. Most designs that are based on the paper metaphor excite for a minute, then quickly start to bore! Thirdly, people don't need the old aesthetic for its own sake; multicolumn layouts on an A6 canvas with A5 granularity is just plain nuts. Finally, the reader doesn't really give a shit about the nostalgic closed reading experience with a beginning and end.
"So far, the iPad is not the saviour of the old print model but a Trojan Horse," he concludes. "Most iPad magazines show what doesn't work."
The most popular mechanism for deploying magazines on the iPad and Android operating systems is via their app stores. Publishers like this because it offers a pay-walled approach and delivers their branding, though they dislike it for the lack of subscriber information and Apple's 30 per cent revenue grab.
For traditional print designers, an app-based approach entails a conversion plug-in that simply takes a typical InDesign document and readies it for digital. They are offered extra parameters in the layout stage, such as carousel image galleries and video boxes, and a 'live layer' is then overlaid upon the design that links to the hosted content via XML.
WoodWing is one such solution, while Adobe has launched its own Digital Publishing Suite that takes InDesign layouts and converts them to the .issue (soon to be .folio) format. Even Quark is in on the game with the release of its iPad Publishing Service for QuarkXPress.
The boon for designers is that they don't need to learn any new technical skills. Layouts still flow to a grid, and the production flow is not unnecessarily cluttered with hours of programming. The uploading and linking of interactive content is taken care of in the production stage, letting designers focus on layout.
Yet this facsimile approach doesn't favour designers and readers. It favours publishers, as MagCulture.com and Colophon co-founder Jeremy Leslie points out: "WoodWing and Adobe DPS are useful testing tools for the new medium. They are huge distractions for publishers, however. They rely on the relative ease of using InDesign to create the app 'pages', and many large publishers jump at the synergy of design and production teams using existing staff to create apps.
"The iPad is a very unforgiving environment for random decoration and design elements," Leslie continues. "If any magazine designer thinks they can sleepwalk into creating an app, they'll soon find out it's not that simple. It's back to square one, re-assessing your editorial project and figuring a way forward."
In contrast to the traditional magazine approach of regular issues, unique content and bespoke design is the content-serving approach. Take Flipboard, for example. It is still an app, but one that can be personalised with reader-selected content, and can be replicated in-browser. TweetMag is a similar concept, but this and Flipboard are, from a design point of view, more akin to web design where a one-off template is created and new content deployed into this skin.
These concepts do hint at the direction publications may move toward, though. Flipboard shows interesting potential for serving automatically designed content, because it's neither a magazine nor a website but a satisfying hybrid that shows a possible way forward. Still, in examples like these the designer's role is in creating a one-off template, reducing the creative potential of the app. Like front-end web design, Photoshop, Fireworks and Dreamweaver are the tools of choice, as well as an understanding of JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS.
The sensible money is on a union of the app-based model paired with the flexibility and openness of a content-server approach proving successful. If the publishers find a way to make the economics of this model work, it could be the next standard for designers to work in.
So what technical skills should designers covet in preparation for this new dawn of digital publishing? The answer, for now at least, is nothing radical. Digital magazines bear closer comparison to websites. User experience, navigation and a clear hierarchy of content are imperative to successful digital magazine design, as is an appreciation of the reader and the content they want to interact with.
"On the one hand, print design at its best is about understanding how a magazine or newspaper is produced and how readers read it," says John-Henry Barac of Barac Consulting, who created The Guardian's well-received iPhone app. "On the other, it's about who those readers are and what they like."
Barac believes the role of the traditional designer is not outmoded in digital publications, rather their core skills form a solid base. But that base needs to be augmented with an appreciation of the technical capabilities that apps offer.
"Designers bring a particular perspective, taste and hopefully courage to what they do," remarks Barac on their strengths. "These skills are not limited to one platform. However, designing for apps does require other skills: an understanding or readiness to learn about user interface, animation and structuring, so the content is easy to navigate. It's also important to talk to developers, and pick up enough about their skills to know what's possible."
This opinion is shared by Oliver Reichenstein. He believes that traditional print design skills, such as typography use, colour and image choice paired with a sensible grid structure, will still have their place. But designers need to recognise the technical differences in formats before they can reach creative potential.
"Even the typographic sensitivity for digital magazines is of a completely different nature," says Reichenstein. "Print magazines are made to flip. Digital magazines should be structured in a way that requires as few interactions as possible. Low input, high output is the magic formula of good interface design."
Reichenstein also points out that tablet-based publication design is hampered by the lack of bespoke design elements available. Standard web fonts are often too small, while print fonts are generally too large. Couple this with the huge differences in contrast and reading distance, and the gulf between print and tablet design becomes clear.
"These aren't rules, they are guidelines," adds Reichenstein. "Bigger leading is key, with a wider measure [to compensate for a] further reading distance. Plus designers need to modify the contrast of their work - type on paper compared to a backlit display of a tablet is completely different," he reasons.
Regardless of the model of the tablet, the style of the digital edition, the reader profile, or the technical trappings available to bring the content to life, Jeremy Leslie believes designers creating for digital magazines should remember the fundamentals of design above all else. "Print designers shouldn't enter the digital realm just because of a plug-in," Leslie explains, "but because they want to learn something completely new. One critical design skill that is common across print and iPad is that every part of the design has to be there for a reason."
If 2010 was the year of the iPad, it was also the year that the publishing industry experimented with digital magazines, and ultimately came up short. The likes of Wired, Vogue and Popular Science might have impressed with their design, but readers were less than enthralled. Large downloads, slow renders and a distinct ambiguity between where and how readers should engage with articles left many underwhelmed. And the numbers didn't make for pretty reading, either.
At the tail end of 2010, a study by Research2Guidance reported that Condé Nast's US Wired iPad magazine sold 73,000 copies when it launched in May 2010. By November, this had fallen to 23,000. Vanity Fair sold 10,500 of its digital edition in October but then 8,700 in November, and GQ's average fell from 13,000 in October to 11,000 in November.
Not only are such figures totally unsustainable for publishers, they also prove that app-based editorial design simply hasn't got it right yet. The same content worked successfully for readers in a print environment, so where has it gone wrong for tablets?
"A lot of presumptions have been proved wrong in digital magazine design," states Information Architects' (iA) Oliver Reichenstein, a renowned user experience (UX) and interactive designer whose own app, Writer, has been celebrated for its tablet suitability. His analysis of the digital publication market on the iA blog is both forthright and rational, and he makes some highly pertinent points on the current trend for digital mimicking print.
"Firstly, the iPad is not a 'lean back' medium; 'lean forward' music apps work perfectly well on it," he says. "Two, people can live without flipping pages. Most designs that are based on the paper metaphor excite for a minute, then quickly start to bore! Thirdly, people don't need the old aesthetic for its own sake; multicolumn layouts on an A6 canvas with A5 granularity is just plain nuts. Finally, the reader doesn't really give a shit about the nostalgic closed reading experience with a beginning and end.
"So far, the iPad is not the saviour of the old print model but a Trojan Horse," he concludes. "Most iPad magazines show what doesn't work."
The most popular mechanism for deploying magazines on the iPad and Android operating systems is via their app stores. Publishers like this because it offers a pay-walled approach and delivers their branding, though they dislike it for the lack of subscriber information and Apple's 30 per cent revenue grab.
For traditional print designers, an app-based approach entails a conversion plug-in that simply takes a typical InDesign document and readies it for digital. They are offered extra parameters in the layout stage, such as carousel image galleries and video boxes, and a 'live layer' is then overlaid upon the design that links to the hosted content via XML.
WoodWing is one such solution, while Adobe has launched its own Digital Publishing Suite that takes InDesign layouts and converts them to the .issue (soon to be .folio) format. Even Quark is in on the game with the release of its iPad Publishing Service for QuarkXPress.
The boon for designers is that they don't need to learn any new technical skills. Layouts still flow to a grid, and the production flow is not unnecessarily cluttered with hours of programming. The uploading and linking of interactive content is taken care of in the production stage, letting designers focus on layout.
Yet this facsimile approach doesn't favour designers and readers. It favours publishers, as MagCulture.com and Colophon co-founder Jeremy Leslie points out: "WoodWing and Adobe DPS are useful testing tools for the new medium. They are huge distractions for publishers, however. They rely on the relative ease of using InDesign to create the app 'pages', and many large publishers jump at the synergy of design and production teams using existing staff to create apps.
"The iPad is a very unforgiving environment for random decoration and design elements," Leslie continues. "If any magazine designer thinks they can sleepwalk into creating an app, they'll soon find out it's not that simple. It's back to square one, re-assessing your editorial project and figuring a way forward."
In contrast to the traditional magazine approach of regular issues, unique content and bespoke design is the content-serving approach. Take Flipboard, for example. It is still an app, but one that can be personalised with reader-selected content, and can be replicated in-browser. TweetMag is a similar concept, but this and Flipboard are, from a design point of view, more akin to web design where a one-off template is created and new content deployed into this skin.
These concepts do hint at the direction publications may move toward, though. Flipboard shows interesting potential for serving automatically designed content, because it's neither a magazine nor a website but a satisfying hybrid that shows a possible way forward. Still, in examples like these the designer's role is in creating a one-off template, reducing the creative potential of the app. Like front-end web design, Photoshop, Fireworks and Dreamweaver are the tools of choice, as well as an understanding of JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS.
The sensible money is on a union of the app-based model paired with the flexibility and openness of a content-server approach proving successful. If the publishers find a way to make the economics of this model work, it could be the next standard for designers to work in.
So what technical skills should designers covet in preparation for this new dawn of digital publishing? The answer, for now at least, is nothing radical. Digital magazines bear closer comparison to websites. User experience, navigation and a clear hierarchy of content are imperative to successful digital magazine design, as is an appreciation of the reader and the content they want to interact with.
"On the one hand, print design at its best is about understanding how a magazine or newspaper is produced and how readers read it," says John-Henry Barac of Barac Consulting, who created The Guardian's well-received iPhone app. "On the other, it's about who those readers are and what they like."
Barac believes the role of the traditional designer is not outmoded in digital publications, rather their core skills form a solid base. But that base needs to be augmented with an appreciation of the technical capabilities that apps offer.
"Designers bring a particular perspective, taste and hopefully courage to what they do," remarks Barac on their strengths. "These skills are not limited to one platform. However, designing for apps does require other skills: an understanding or readiness to learn about user interface, animation and structuring, so the content is easy to navigate. It's also important to talk to developers, and pick up enough about their skills to know what's possible."
This opinion is shared by Oliver Reichenstein. He believes that traditional print design skills, such as typography use, colour and image choice paired with a sensible grid structure, will still have their place. But designers need to recognise the technical differences in formats before they can reach creative potential.
"Even the typographic sensitivity for digital magazines is of a completely different nature," says Reichenstein. "Print magazines are made to flip. Digital magazines should be structured in a way that requires as few interactions as possible. Low input, high output is the magic formula of good interface design."
Reichenstein also points out that tablet-based publication design is hampered by the lack of bespoke design elements available. Standard web fonts are often too small, while print fonts are generally too large. Couple this with the huge differences in contrast and reading distance, and the gulf between print and tablet design becomes clear.
"These aren't rules, they are guidelines," adds Reichenstein. "Bigger leading is key, with a wider measure [to compensate for a] further reading distance. Plus designers need to modify the contrast of their work - type on paper compared to a backlit display of a tablet is completely different," he reasons.
Regardless of the model of the tablet, the style of the digital edition, the reader profile, or the technical trappings available to bring the content to life, Jeremy Leslie believes designers creating for digital magazines should remember the fundamentals of design above all else. "Print designers shouldn't enter the digital realm just because of a plug-in," Leslie explains, "but because they want to learn something completely new. One critical design skill that is common across print and iPad is that every part of the design has to be there for a reason."
OUGD601 // Dissertation // The change of Graphic Design
With one foot in advertising and one in design, Laura Jordan-Bambach believes the rise of immersive experience-based design is where the two will finally converge
Something big has happened over the last few years. Have you felt it? Quietly, the future of our industry is being built underneath us. You might describe me as someone who’s had one foot in design and one in advertising. But those feet are attached to one creative body, and I can walk without tripping over my shoelaces. I’ve never felt at odds with myself, but it can be difficult to talk about a commercial creative industry without garnering a whole lot of flak from both ‘sides’.
In my experience, barriers create barriers, and the historical differences between ‘design’ and ‘advertising’ have built walls so high that it’s hard to even find a common language, let alone respect. Even university courses actively discourage students from exploring rich territories ‘on the other side’.
Technology has changed not just our landscape, but the expectations and behaviours of our audiences. No agency or studio would disagree – in fact, it’s been the shift we’ve all been wrestling with.
So why is it that design and advertising still act like they’re worlds apart, and that we have no appreciation of the other’s expertise? Ultimately, these worlds are just sides of a coin, and increasingly indistinguishable from each other.
In design, digital products are part of the daily life of any design studio. Kickstarter is changing the model for product design funding and making marketing part of the design process itself. Alibaba and others are putting prototyping within the reach of amateurs. Design that’s aware of social media is everywhere – referenced and created within the new advertising space.
And there’s no more powerful view on how this world of advertising has changed than to compare the Cannes Lion winners from 2004 (less than a year before YouTube was born) and last year. In 2004, it was all about great stories, beautifully crafted, in key media – much the same as it ever was. From the epic Sony PlayStation 2 ‘Mountain’ ad to Doubleyou’s groundbreaking (at the time) and sexy vector Nike digital executions, advertising in 2004 was still very much about pushing a message.
As the decade played out, advertising became more about experiences than messages. Encouraging behaviours and creating a brand purpose became more potent. Behavioural Economics became mainstream, and agencies had to adapt and start to take on digital work – including areas seen as more classically fitting digital design. Advertising was getting bigger, and more difficult to classify.
So to the most recent awards: great stories, crafted so people can live them, across multiple platforms, with no end. The rise of the experience and product over the message is even more evident, and these need real design. Classic advertising agencies are seeing value in the design approach. Look at BBH’s latest partner, Adam Powers, who comes with a great heritage as head of UX&D at the BBC.
Our industry needs both storytellers and cartographers, one-liners and brand statements that traverse years. We need different kinds of creatives and a different kind of creative director to join the dots. There are amazing people living in the intersection, such as Poke and Plumen’s Nik Roope and R/GA London ECD George Prest (who believes that the rise of the designer alongside the traditional advertising creative team is the future). There are some big agencies and studios embracing a one-world view. DigitasLBi has a strong focus on blended skills, and at Dare we have a creative department embracing all aspects of the creative (and technical) process.
This merging of disciplines is finally happening in colleges too. I recently co-authored the Masters in Information Experience Design degree at the Royal College of Art – dean Neville Brody describes it as the ‘glue’ between the other design disciplines. Here you learn everything from cognitive science to experience planning to old-fashioned graphics. But you make yourself equally as valuable on a project whether its for yourself, at an ad agency or a design studio.
As programmes like this become more common, feeding all areas of commercial communication, perhaps we’ll start to see more flexible and respectful attitudes towards each other. Until then, we can all be part of the revolution.
Something big has happened over the last few years. Have you felt it? Quietly, the future of our industry is being built underneath us. You might describe me as someone who’s had one foot in design and one in advertising. But those feet are attached to one creative body, and I can walk without tripping over my shoelaces. I’ve never felt at odds with myself, but it can be difficult to talk about a commercial creative industry without garnering a whole lot of flak from both ‘sides’.
In my experience, barriers create barriers, and the historical differences between ‘design’ and ‘advertising’ have built walls so high that it’s hard to even find a common language, let alone respect. Even university courses actively discourage students from exploring rich territories ‘on the other side’.
Technology has changed not just our landscape, but the expectations and behaviours of our audiences. No agency or studio would disagree – in fact, it’s been the shift we’ve all been wrestling with.
So why is it that design and advertising still act like they’re worlds apart, and that we have no appreciation of the other’s expertise? Ultimately, these worlds are just sides of a coin, and increasingly indistinguishable from each other.
In design, digital products are part of the daily life of any design studio. Kickstarter is changing the model for product design funding and making marketing part of the design process itself. Alibaba and others are putting prototyping within the reach of amateurs. Design that’s aware of social media is everywhere – referenced and created within the new advertising space.
And there’s no more powerful view on how this world of advertising has changed than to compare the Cannes Lion winners from 2004 (less than a year before YouTube was born) and last year. In 2004, it was all about great stories, beautifully crafted, in key media – much the same as it ever was. From the epic Sony PlayStation 2 ‘Mountain’ ad to Doubleyou’s groundbreaking (at the time) and sexy vector Nike digital executions, advertising in 2004 was still very much about pushing a message.
As the decade played out, advertising became more about experiences than messages. Encouraging behaviours and creating a brand purpose became more potent. Behavioural Economics became mainstream, and agencies had to adapt and start to take on digital work – including areas seen as more classically fitting digital design. Advertising was getting bigger, and more difficult to classify.
So to the most recent awards: great stories, crafted so people can live them, across multiple platforms, with no end. The rise of the experience and product over the message is even more evident, and these need real design. Classic advertising agencies are seeing value in the design approach. Look at BBH’s latest partner, Adam Powers, who comes with a great heritage as head of UX&D at the BBC.
Our industry needs both storytellers and cartographers, one-liners and brand statements that traverse years. We need different kinds of creatives and a different kind of creative director to join the dots. There are amazing people living in the intersection, such as Poke and Plumen’s Nik Roope and R/GA London ECD George Prest (who believes that the rise of the designer alongside the traditional advertising creative team is the future). There are some big agencies and studios embracing a one-world view. DigitasLBi has a strong focus on blended skills, and at Dare we have a creative department embracing all aspects of the creative (and technical) process.
This merging of disciplines is finally happening in colleges too. I recently co-authored the Masters in Information Experience Design degree at the Royal College of Art – dean Neville Brody describes it as the ‘glue’ between the other design disciplines. Here you learn everything from cognitive science to experience planning to old-fashioned graphics. But you make yourself equally as valuable on a project whether its for yourself, at an ad agency or a design studio.
As programmes like this become more common, feeding all areas of commercial communication, perhaps we’ll start to see more flexible and respectful attitudes towards each other. Until then, we can all be part of the revolution.
OUGD601 // Dissertation // Digital Design Imperative
Designers who can remain focused on the finer details are uniquely positioned to grasp the opportunities presented by our brave new digital world, argues Dean Johnson
Opinions matter. And mine has always been that if bad typography and Photoshop work don’t make your blood boil then you shouldn’t be a designer. If you can sit on the train opposite an ad featuring poorly kerned letters or view a Frankenstein’s monster comp of a ‘lead character when young’ movie prop photo and not twitch, you are creatively dead inside.
Slink away now if you’re unmoved by either example, or hang around and get motivated. The role of designer has changed beyond all recognition since I left college (it’s moved fast; I’m not that old). So what is graphic design? Well, before ‘digital’ it used to be relatively easy to define: branding, brochures, editorial layouts, posters, flyers and packaging, for starters.
That list still exists, but many brochures are now interactive, from PDFs to eBooks with websites that either replicate or deliver the same content. Great editorial layouts are still essential for tablet-based magazines and eBooks because the eye is arrested by the skilful juxtaposition of stunning images and intelligent typography. Posters, meanwhile, work on various levels, from the 48-sheet variety now on many digital Jumbotrons to our ever-increasing desktop screen sizes offering the scale previously reserved for printed posters. And flyers, unless they come from a local pizza delivery business, are now emails, Facebook posts or Tweets. We haven’t lost packaging from our high streets yet, but the online marketplace offers increasing numbers of virtually packaged downloads.
So, who gives a crap? Things change. Technology advances and forces us to move with it. It’s a take that can lead to the kind of sloppy Photoshop, branding and layouts that make me want to punch inanimate objects (or designers). It’s an attitude cultivated by creatives who don’t live and breathe design, as well as clients who believe our computers do all the work.
So snap out of it. And appreciate the incredible opportunities to not only design great visual experiences, but also to bring them to life as incredible user experiences. The graphic design label has been well and truly scrapped – welcome to the wonderful new world of design, where the brief to create postage stamps becomes the task to build instantly recognisable icons or miniaturised album covers and book jackets, where the fight to be seen and remembered provides the ultimate pixel-pushing challenge. Wearable technology and smart TVs will provide your next playgrounds, so start thinking about future opportunities to make a design difference.
Knock down the mental barriers and apply great design thinking to everything you do. Don’t assign different standards to different work or clients – we live in a world in which a local butcher can have as much global visibility as Wal-Mart. The world’s eyes are on your kerning, your cut-outs and your colour palette.
Opinions matter. And mine has always been that if bad typography and Photoshop work don’t make your blood boil then you shouldn’t be a designer. If you can sit on the train opposite an ad featuring poorly kerned letters or view a Frankenstein’s monster comp of a ‘lead character when young’ movie prop photo and not twitch, you are creatively dead inside.
Slink away now if you’re unmoved by either example, or hang around and get motivated. The role of designer has changed beyond all recognition since I left college (it’s moved fast; I’m not that old). So what is graphic design? Well, before ‘digital’ it used to be relatively easy to define: branding, brochures, editorial layouts, posters, flyers and packaging, for starters.
That list still exists, but many brochures are now interactive, from PDFs to eBooks with websites that either replicate or deliver the same content. Great editorial layouts are still essential for tablet-based magazines and eBooks because the eye is arrested by the skilful juxtaposition of stunning images and intelligent typography. Posters, meanwhile, work on various levels, from the 48-sheet variety now on many digital Jumbotrons to our ever-increasing desktop screen sizes offering the scale previously reserved for printed posters. And flyers, unless they come from a local pizza delivery business, are now emails, Facebook posts or Tweets. We haven’t lost packaging from our high streets yet, but the online marketplace offers increasing numbers of virtually packaged downloads.
So, who gives a crap? Things change. Technology advances and forces us to move with it. It’s a take that can lead to the kind of sloppy Photoshop, branding and layouts that make me want to punch inanimate objects (or designers). It’s an attitude cultivated by creatives who don’t live and breathe design, as well as clients who believe our computers do all the work.
So snap out of it. And appreciate the incredible opportunities to not only design great visual experiences, but also to bring them to life as incredible user experiences. The graphic design label has been well and truly scrapped – welcome to the wonderful new world of design, where the brief to create postage stamps becomes the task to build instantly recognisable icons or miniaturised album covers and book jackets, where the fight to be seen and remembered provides the ultimate pixel-pushing challenge. Wearable technology and smart TVs will provide your next playgrounds, so start thinking about future opportunities to make a design difference.
Knock down the mental barriers and apply great design thinking to everything you do. Don’t assign different standards to different work or clients – we live in a world in which a local butcher can have as much global visibility as Wal-Mart. The world’s eyes are on your kerning, your cut-outs and your colour palette.
OUGD601 // Dissertation // Independent magazines go digital
The ongoing success of the iPad is creating amazing opportunities for independent mags. We speak to four small publishers making the most of it
Faced with declining circulations, rising print costs and competition from free sources like Google, blogs and social networks, traditional magazines are facing a perfect storm of changes that are threatening the very model their businesses have been built on. The launch of Apple Newsstand in October 2011 has helped some, but in this new adapt-or-die environment, simply churning out PDF versions of old print titles doesn’t always cut it. Which is why the future of publishing arguably belongs to the small, but growing band of independent publishers and magazines who are exploiting the power of tablets like the iPad to do amazing, engaging and immersive things with the medium.
For titles like Astronaut, Clear, Katachi, Letter to Jane and Post, going down the iPad route makes perfect sense – they’re able to sidestep the costs of print, distribution and promotion that bedevil traditional publishing, enabling them to enter the market at relatively low cost, while also giving them ready access to a fast-growing worldwide audience of tablet owners. Lower entry costs also make it possible for anyone – not just deep-pocketed tycoon types like Viscount Rothermere or the Barclay brothers – to launch their own digital magazine. All you need is talent, ideas and a digital publishing tool like Creative Suite or Mag+.
One great example of this new approach to publishing is Letter to Jane, an independent culture magazine created, curated and published by Oregon-based creative Tim Moore. Moore came up with the idea for Letter to Jane after he was unable to find work as a recent graduate. Originally launched as a blog in 2009, Letter to Jane first appeared in iTunes App Store form in the summer of 2011, with four issues – Letter to Jane, Late Autumn, Moral Tales and Shadows – published so far. Moore admits that he looked at the idea of producing a print version of Letter to Jane at first, but was put off by the high print and distribution costs. And then he found inspiration in the then new iPad: “I already had a MacBook, Apple’s development tools were free to download and the developer’s fee was only $99 a year, so I wasn’t taking much risk to explore, plus I had a ton of free time to take up the challenge,” says Moore. “As soon as I got some apps in the Store, I realised I could sell them for a few dollars and make almost the same kinds of profits, if not more, from the apps. I didn’t have to worry about distribution because it was in the App Store. All I had to do was promote a link.”
Given that Moore largely creates Letter to Jane on his own, it comes as little surprise to find that the magazine is stylistically very simple, comprising mainly flat colour or black-and-white images with text, audio and some video content. It lacks the budget or wow factor of rivals like Meri Media’s Post, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, from Moore’s point of view: “I think I’m alone in the world by thinking it’s not necessary to have all those elements,” he says. “Like any other form of design, I feel that you should start with your content and then design around that. If the content you have lends itself to some form of interactivity then explore, but don’t force it, because that just gets in the way of the experience.”
For Moore, Letter to Jane is a labour of love. Each issue’s grids are created in InDesign, before being exported to Photoshop where images are made and added. Moore then takes all the content – typically 10-12 features per issue – and adds the interactive elements using Xcode. “Being able to work in Xcode and figure out interactions and then take that back into InDesign and let that help dictate the design and vice versa has become a very valuable process,” says Moore. “These days I’m doing most of my sketching out of ideas in Xcode and then finalising the look in InDesign and taking it right back.”
The result of this painstaking process is that each issue of Letter to Jane exists as a standalone app with its own bespoke elements, rather than forcing content into a pre-existing wrapper or template like many magazines in Apple Newsstand. That has both its benefits and pitfalls, of course. Moore freely admits that he’s never even covered his costs, let alone made any money from Letter to Jane, with combined sales from the magazine so far totalling only around 9,000-10,000 copies. But for Moore, making money isn’t really the issue: “Letter to Jane was such a huge gamble on my part and even if it’s never been the most lucrative product, I’m so happy that it is what it is.”
While Letter to Jane’s look is inspired by a cinematic aesthetic, Berlin-based Astronaut is concerned with cinema itself – particularly the unheralded makers of documentaries and short films, which are largely overlooked by a system still dominated by large Hollywood studios. Now on its second issue, Astronaut seamlessly blends photography, video, text content and interactive elements to provide a rich, engaging experience that’s aimed squarely at the Vimeo generation, yet assiduously avoids what editor Mickael Brock calls the interactive game element. “A magazine should trust its content and not try to impress the reader with an overload of features,” says Brock. “We have this hidden picture gallery, which we like to use, but this is as far as we want to go.”
Brock says Astronaut typically takes around four weeks of working 9-5 for its editorial team and contributors to put together, but the editorial process is often interrupted by the need to do projects for paying clients – who have commissioned the team off the back of the title. Brock estimates that each issue of Astronaut would cost around €30,000 (£24,171) to put together if it was costed at usual day rates, but says the real cost is much lower as most of it is created either in-house or by friends.
What’s really great about Astronaut is the way it seamlessly blends the magazine experience with an interactive one – it makes more use of text content than Letter to Jane, for example, but also includes plenty of audio, video and slideshow content to stimulate the senses. Its simple, gesture-based navigation is delightful – as you swipe from left to right, right to left or up-down you’re rewarded with parallax scrolling effects, semi-opaque overlays and all kinds of other neat UI surprises. There’s certainly enough on show here to elevate it above bog standard Newsstand magazines, but without being overly fl ashy or annoying from a reader’s perspective.
Clear magazine takes a similar mixed-media approach. Originally created as a luxury, art and fashion print title in 2001 by creative director Emin Kadi, Clear went fully digital in 2011 – a move prompted by both the general fall in print magazine sales and an opportunity to create new reader experiences, something Kadi believes is key to iPad publishing success. “People shouldn’t do page-fl ip magazines for a device that can do so much more,” says Kadi. “The audience is not expecting that underwhelming experience. So when we approached this, it was art directed from the standpoint of pushing the limits as far as we could go without grey-screen errors [errors that push the hardware/software to its limits].”
The one big drawback to pushing those limits is that increasing the amount of audio, video and interactivity inevitably has consequences in terms of the time and money spent producing each edition. Producing one issue of Clear takes around three months from start to finish, and also requires more resources and a wider talent pool of creatives to realise fully. “Obviously, in the print days it seemed like you needed a lot more staff,” says Kadi. “But now you need video and other types of creatives, so it’s a trade-off. Things get more expensive when you want to do more trailblazing effects and go for the wow factor.”
Whichever end of the iPad publishing spectrum ‘indies’ find themselves on, one thing is clear: giving up print has given them the freedom to create, innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible when it comes to producing great magazines.
Faced with declining circulations, rising print costs and competition from free sources like Google, blogs and social networks, traditional magazines are facing a perfect storm of changes that are threatening the very model their businesses have been built on. The launch of Apple Newsstand in October 2011 has helped some, but in this new adapt-or-die environment, simply churning out PDF versions of old print titles doesn’t always cut it. Which is why the future of publishing arguably belongs to the small, but growing band of independent publishers and magazines who are exploiting the power of tablets like the iPad to do amazing, engaging and immersive things with the medium.
For titles like Astronaut, Clear, Katachi, Letter to Jane and Post, going down the iPad route makes perfect sense – they’re able to sidestep the costs of print, distribution and promotion that bedevil traditional publishing, enabling them to enter the market at relatively low cost, while also giving them ready access to a fast-growing worldwide audience of tablet owners. Lower entry costs also make it possible for anyone – not just deep-pocketed tycoon types like Viscount Rothermere or the Barclay brothers – to launch their own digital magazine. All you need is talent, ideas and a digital publishing tool like Creative Suite or Mag+.
One great example of this new approach to publishing is Letter to Jane, an independent culture magazine created, curated and published by Oregon-based creative Tim Moore. Moore came up with the idea for Letter to Jane after he was unable to find work as a recent graduate. Originally launched as a blog in 2009, Letter to Jane first appeared in iTunes App Store form in the summer of 2011, with four issues – Letter to Jane, Late Autumn, Moral Tales and Shadows – published so far. Moore admits that he looked at the idea of producing a print version of Letter to Jane at first, but was put off by the high print and distribution costs. And then he found inspiration in the then new iPad: “I already had a MacBook, Apple’s development tools were free to download and the developer’s fee was only $99 a year, so I wasn’t taking much risk to explore, plus I had a ton of free time to take up the challenge,” says Moore. “As soon as I got some apps in the Store, I realised I could sell them for a few dollars and make almost the same kinds of profits, if not more, from the apps. I didn’t have to worry about distribution because it was in the App Store. All I had to do was promote a link.”
Given that Moore largely creates Letter to Jane on his own, it comes as little surprise to find that the magazine is stylistically very simple, comprising mainly flat colour or black-and-white images with text, audio and some video content. It lacks the budget or wow factor of rivals like Meri Media’s Post, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, from Moore’s point of view: “I think I’m alone in the world by thinking it’s not necessary to have all those elements,” he says. “Like any other form of design, I feel that you should start with your content and then design around that. If the content you have lends itself to some form of interactivity then explore, but don’t force it, because that just gets in the way of the experience.”
For Moore, Letter to Jane is a labour of love. Each issue’s grids are created in InDesign, before being exported to Photoshop where images are made and added. Moore then takes all the content – typically 10-12 features per issue – and adds the interactive elements using Xcode. “Being able to work in Xcode and figure out interactions and then take that back into InDesign and let that help dictate the design and vice versa has become a very valuable process,” says Moore. “These days I’m doing most of my sketching out of ideas in Xcode and then finalising the look in InDesign and taking it right back.”
The result of this painstaking process is that each issue of Letter to Jane exists as a standalone app with its own bespoke elements, rather than forcing content into a pre-existing wrapper or template like many magazines in Apple Newsstand. That has both its benefits and pitfalls, of course. Moore freely admits that he’s never even covered his costs, let alone made any money from Letter to Jane, with combined sales from the magazine so far totalling only around 9,000-10,000 copies. But for Moore, making money isn’t really the issue: “Letter to Jane was such a huge gamble on my part and even if it’s never been the most lucrative product, I’m so happy that it is what it is.”
While Letter to Jane’s look is inspired by a cinematic aesthetic, Berlin-based Astronaut is concerned with cinema itself – particularly the unheralded makers of documentaries and short films, which are largely overlooked by a system still dominated by large Hollywood studios. Now on its second issue, Astronaut seamlessly blends photography, video, text content and interactive elements to provide a rich, engaging experience that’s aimed squarely at the Vimeo generation, yet assiduously avoids what editor Mickael Brock calls the interactive game element. “A magazine should trust its content and not try to impress the reader with an overload of features,” says Brock. “We have this hidden picture gallery, which we like to use, but this is as far as we want to go.”
Brock says Astronaut typically takes around four weeks of working 9-5 for its editorial team and contributors to put together, but the editorial process is often interrupted by the need to do projects for paying clients – who have commissioned the team off the back of the title. Brock estimates that each issue of Astronaut would cost around €30,000 (£24,171) to put together if it was costed at usual day rates, but says the real cost is much lower as most of it is created either in-house or by friends.
What’s really great about Astronaut is the way it seamlessly blends the magazine experience with an interactive one – it makes more use of text content than Letter to Jane, for example, but also includes plenty of audio, video and slideshow content to stimulate the senses. Its simple, gesture-based navigation is delightful – as you swipe from left to right, right to left or up-down you’re rewarded with parallax scrolling effects, semi-opaque overlays and all kinds of other neat UI surprises. There’s certainly enough on show here to elevate it above bog standard Newsstand magazines, but without being overly fl ashy or annoying from a reader’s perspective.
Clear magazine takes a similar mixed-media approach. Originally created as a luxury, art and fashion print title in 2001 by creative director Emin Kadi, Clear went fully digital in 2011 – a move prompted by both the general fall in print magazine sales and an opportunity to create new reader experiences, something Kadi believes is key to iPad publishing success. “People shouldn’t do page-fl ip magazines for a device that can do so much more,” says Kadi. “The audience is not expecting that underwhelming experience. So when we approached this, it was art directed from the standpoint of pushing the limits as far as we could go without grey-screen errors [errors that push the hardware/software to its limits].”
The one big drawback to pushing those limits is that increasing the amount of audio, video and interactivity inevitably has consequences in terms of the time and money spent producing each edition. Producing one issue of Clear takes around three months from start to finish, and also requires more resources and a wider talent pool of creatives to realise fully. “Obviously, in the print days it seemed like you needed a lot more staff,” says Kadi. “But now you need video and other types of creatives, so it’s a trade-off. Things get more expensive when you want to do more trailblazing effects and go for the wow factor.”
Whichever end of the iPad publishing spectrum ‘indies’ find themselves on, one thing is clear: giving up print has given them the freedom to create, innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible when it comes to producing great magazines.
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