Final Project – Presentation
The aim of my Final Project is to produce a digital magazine that focuses on mobile technology. With this, I’d like to take an in-depth look at the existing design principles of magazines, and try to apply them to the digital space. The result of the project will be a magazine in a PDF format that is optimized for mobile viewing experience. The format would allow the magazine to be uploaded on different on-line publishing platforms like issuu. Furthermore, most current smartphones are equipped with a PDF reader by default, which makes magazine viewing possible on the go.
To identify my readership, I’ve used a consumer tech magazine – STUFF - as an example. According to the latest report from National Readership Survey, the dominant group of readers are between 15-44 years old (190k) in the ABC1 group that corresponds to the upper to lower middle class workers. This means that the typical reader is economically active, and thus more likely to own an expensive smartphone. A research by comScore also proves that most smartphone users (in US) in the age between 25-44.
Scanning print magazine issues and distributing them online isn’t anything new. Engadget, for example, are starting to offer a weekly round-up of their best online news stories and reviews in a format that is very reminiscent to magazines. Large companies, like Times Inc., have already started offering subscriptions to its magazines that would also include access to digital versions on different platforms like PC and Google’s Android OS. Also mentioned earlier, issuu is a well known online source for a broad range of paid and free magazines. There’s a free Android mobile app of Issuu, but closer look sadly reveals that it does very little to make the magazines an enjoyable experience on devices with smaller screens.
With my Final Project, I’d like to show that magazine content can be optimized for viewing on phones. While it’s widely understood that magazines are going ‘paperless’, no real efforts has been made to transition magazines to mobile devices with smaller screens. However, the growing popularity of smartphones spelled the rise in portable devices with large and detailed enough screens for the mobile viewing of magazines to be relatively comfortable.
I recognize that blatantly porting the magazine to a digital format wouldn’t be the right choice. To succeed, care must be taken to recognize the fundamental design concepts that identify magazines, and apply them, where possible, to the digital and mobile experience. The obvious challenge lies in the modest size of mobile screens, and this has been one of the main reasons why phone-optimized magazines haven’t really taken off.
Here’s a typical magazine spread as viewed on the iPhone (sample taken from ‘Digit’ January 2012 issue):
In contract to this, the aim of the project is to cater the magazine content specifically for mobile screens (sample taken from my final project):
Magazines can benefit in various ways for going digital. First and foremost, print fees can be skipped, and circulation and logistics fees are narrowed down to the expenses associated with the internet bandwidth costs. Secondly, going digital allows magazines to be distributed to the consumers in a much timelier manner. The magazine can be directly stored on compact devices like mobile phones that are small enough for people to carry them wherever they go. A more advanced version of digital magazine can also employ interactive multi-media content like videos or useful web-links.
The main tools for the development of the project is Adobe Photoshop and inDesing. These are extensively used in the magazine publishing field (alongside Adobe Illustrator). I would like to use my Final Project as opportunity to further develop my skills with these applications alongside my writing skills, thus hopefully improving my employability.
While I have laid down basic ground work for my digital magazine, there are several technical issues I’m yet to address. Above that, the ongoing question is which digital distribution platform is the most suitable one.
