With our own recent foray into the world of digital tablets (see our iPad work with INL) this article takes a very interesting look at how digital tablets have the potential to revolutionise the print industry.
Article taken from New Media Monthly - http://newmediamonthly.co.uk
From headaches to hay fever, tablets often provide a speedy return to good health. Now the publishing industry is hoping digital tablets may do the same for their falling sales.
About 10 years ago marked the start of worrying times for newspapers. As the internet became commonplace, panicked journalists started to talk about apocalypse – there was no way the print publishing industry could compete with the fast, up-to-date and, most importantly, free content websites were giving out.
The websites are still blooming, and print readerships declining. But something has happened to soothe the worriers. The introduction of mobile devices with a high-quality display screen – smartphones and tablets – means that things might not be so bad after all.
The possibilities of the new platform have got the industry buzzing. Not long after the launch of the iPad in the spring, the first magazine apps were launched as well.
Entering a new exciting world of digital content, the challenge publishers now face is finding the golden middle path between the print and online versions to create something that truly works on the new platform.
Striking that balance is certainly not easy. The temptation of duplicating the print content straight to a glossy new device is big as is the temptation of laying the content in a style too much like on a website.
The traditional experience
For help in determining what might work and what wouldn’t, the magazine industry can turn to a inspirational demo developed by publisher Bonnier and London-based agency BERG.
The conceptual demo video of Mag+ platform, published last December, was among the first to truly examine the possibilities of tablet readers and open up a conversation about them.
The project was set to capture the “essence of magazine reading using the power of digital media to create a rich, meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines”, the project blog stated.
“We’re focusing on creating relaxing reading experiences like with physical magazines that don’t feel like the web or an app,” Matt Jones, design director at BERG said.
This seems to be the ace up the sleeve of the tablets. While there might not be a lot of actual multimedia content which couldn’t already be up on the websites, the e-magazine apps might be right in trying to capture something essential of the experience of reading a print magazine instead of moving away from it.
From a reader’s point of view, there is certainly something nice about the traditional experience. With websites shoving information at us on a constant loop, the idea of consuming a full, ready and manageable product does seem attractive.
A new era of media
The response to Bonnier’s and Berg’s project was great. The smooth, intuitive interface together with purpose built content managed to really impress. At the time, a tech startups website hailed Mag+ as “totally awesome”.
“In the videos that Berg released to Bonnier for the Mag+ you’ll get the sense very quickly that these guys are smart and are looking for intuitive solutions that can help save many publishing companies today. They simply need better products and this, if ever released, could be one of them”, they wrote.
And it turned out to be more than just sweet talk and fancy demos. In April, Bonnier lived up to their promises, launching Mag+ on iPad with their magazine Popular Science.
Apart from a few features, Mag+ was what the demo in December promised. The user interface is impressive. You swipe right and left between the articles, down to read, pull a drawer up with two fingers to see the contents of a table, pan and move around big images by holding a finger between two pages – you can even dog-ear a page by turning down the top right corner.
When Wired magazine unveiled their iPad app in February, they were excited as little kids in a sweet shop about the possibilities of the new platform.
“We are entering a new era of media, where we finally have a platform that allows us to retain all the rich visual features of high-gloss print, from lavish design to glorious photography, while augmenting it with video, animations, additional content and full interactivity.”
Whether or not the magazine industry will truly be able to re-establish themselves, fusing the best elements of old and new, remains to be seen...
