Three examples of well-designed digital publishing | 21 Oct 2011

There are some strong signs that publishers are beginning to think very seriously about the design of their digital publications, and work out how new platforms like the iPad can be best used to display their content.

This is very welcome indeed. For the last couple of years, many publishers have assumed that they are ‘doing’ digital publishing if they just put a turning-page replica of their print product on a screen; some have gone a step further, and sprinkled a few token videos and picture slideshows onto their replicas. To be clear: a turning-page replica of a print magazine does not create a digital publication – it creates a digital version of a print publication.

Is this just splitting hairs? I don’t think so. A print publication has some very basic characteristics that sit uneasily with the typical on-screen experience. Most print publications are portrait; most screens are landscape. Print publications are static; digital publications should be interactive. Handy sizes for print publications are too large for most screens (which is why you have to zoom in to read the text of most turning-page replicas). In short, the design and structure of print publications is out of kilter with most digital platforms. Of course, giving people digital access to print publications is a useful thing to do, especially for people seeking specific bits of information while on the move; but it ain’t digital publishing.

So, how wonderful it is to be able to point you towards three publishers that have completely re-imagined their print publications, and are using good design to turn them into genuine digital publications.

For me, most exciting of all is Future Publishing’s new digital vision for its long-standing magazine Guitarist.

Without wishing to engage in hyperbole, the iPad edition of what Future calls Guitarist Deluxe is what I believe digital publishing should be all about; using video, sound files and slideshows to give the magazine a third dimension, creating a treat for the ears and eyes as well as the brain. All the text is still there – no dumbing down by offering just pictures and video – and this is still very much a proper magazine, with long reads and plenty of adverts. It’s also good to see that for this launch edition the advertisers have pulled all the stops out, and many adverts have genuinely add-value interactive elements that allow readers to engage much more closely with the products being advertised. The price of all this digital delight is a hefty download weight that pushes 300Mb, which with my creaking Fenland broadband connection was a bit like trying to stuff a horse down a hosepipe, but it was definitely worth the wait.

The second pleasing example of what I regard as proper digital publishing is the Good Food magazine’s iPad edition. This BBC publication works very well indeed as a digital publication: the print magazine’s excellent food photography achieves a glistening luminosity on the iPad’s back-lit screen; cleverly, each page showcasing a dish can rotate to view the full recipe on the flipside; and you can email yourself a list of all the ingredients by touching an icon. Out of curiosity, I bought the print edition of Good Food as well as the iPad version, and put them side by side. As a man who has worked in print media for more than 30 years, I found it unsettling and exhilarating in equal measure to realise that I preferred the digital version…

Finally, I’d like to mention The Guardian iPad edition, which launched last week. The newspaper has moved firmly away from the highly structured layouts of other newspapers’ digital offerings, which tend to replicate the editorial hierarchies of their print edition; instead, the reader is presented with a pleasingly-designed and colourful patchwork of headlines and images.

Although these are loosely assembled into sections, I found myself gadding about from area to area, following stories as they caught my eye, rather than ploughing my usual path through the sections one by one. A little anarchic, but perhaps that’s the point.

These three digital publications demonstrate that even long-standing magazines and newspapers can adapt brilliantly to match the capabilities and strengths of the new digital platforms. Undoubtedly, some established publishing models are going to suffer and perhaps wither away; but there is always going to be a market for good design and good content.

Mark Rosselli is chairman of CPL