Thursday, May 07, 2009

Plunge ahead into the "high fidelity" digital future, says creative director

Yesterday I attended Paper to Pixels in Toronto, a session co-sponsored by Masthead, Design Edge Canada and Adobe. It was something of an extended gee-whizz infomercial by Adobe, as expected (and there was much to gee-whiz about in its new CS4), but the keynote was a presentation by Campion Primm (great name, huh?) who is the creative director of Viv magazine, a wholly digital California-based women's title.

Primm urged designers (most of the audience) to "go into the digital age with grace" and to get into it early. That way they can hold onto the "high fidelity magazine experience". He was quick to dismiss lame magazine websites as no substitute.
"We want a magazine to look like a magazine."
(I found it interesting that the actual design is done in InDesign then, only after the design is right, web developers layer on the animation that's needed, using Flash.)

Some other observations:
  • the magazine of the future is probably not going to be on paper;
  • digital allows readers to have an enriched experience -- “To have someone interact with your page is going to give them more than if they just read it.”;
  • only if you master serialization -- giving the reader more and repeated experiences -- will you be able to sell advertising;
  • pages need to be designed to use the tools available to avoid endless scrolling, particularly keeping ads in view;
  • videos should be at the readers' option by clicking on it;
  • advertisers often have to have help from the magazine taking advantage of its interactive and animation possibilities.
By the way, Viv is not some throwaway; it's a paid sub, at $US36, available through Zinio.You can preview the issue, however.

Masthead has its own report on the event.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had hopes that this piece might offer some really groundbreaking approach to the future of magazines. Intead, what they're promoting is the same top down, designer driven web jive that cost magazines so many millions in lost money back before web2.0.

And yeah, at one time, excessive flash and aesthetic overdrive was really essential for websites that didn't actually DO anything.

But now, with web2.0, those info paradigms have changed. Most importantly, the nature of the user has changed. That user doesn't have time to wait around for pretty elements to load up - and they're not at all impressed by any of it. We're busy. We want to get to our content - fast. And we want to participate not passive consume some excessive graphic designer's portfolio piece.

Design is absolutely integral to print. User centered design is integral to web - and it isn't about aesthetics. That's why designers loathe it. And yes, I realise design is important and the right fonts are part of user design but usability isn't about sexy spinning objects - it's about the absence of sexy spinning objects.

The future of magazines calls for a totally different approach. One that hasn't yet been tried already a million times before. And one that hopefully isn't going to cost magazines tons of money in risk.

In my view, the future of magazines is user centric. It's one of co-creating and developing "experiences" that actively involve the user. It's about new kinds of content (like live interactive workshops with video and possibly local counterparts).

6:06 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

(Different anon) I agree with the first commenter pretty much wholesale. Magazines have been two or three things to readers - first, in-depth, exclusive, or niche information (timeliness is now in the domain of the web); voice and viewpoint; and richness of experience.

For an interesting example, if you have a strong stomach, visit the Washington Post's package below: at its core a piece of good magazine journalism, but also an editor's note, slideshow, audio of an interview that didn't make it into the original piece, comments, a quick sidebar-like piece, links to related pieces, /and/ a transcript of a chat with the author of the piece after publication, drawing in audience response.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/03/06/ST2009030602446.html?sid=ST2009030602446

This is the way things are going. They may get prettier, but it's also about a more immersive experience via various types of media and conversation with communities of interest.

9:16 pm  
Blogger scribe said...

Thanks to Anon#2 for the link to the Washington Post piece. Proves what I've been arguing for, oh, what seems decades. Content AND the content creator are king. As a content creator I am both willing and able to provide a richness of content and levels of context to a piece. Now only if publishers/packagers/distributors were willing and able to pay for all my work that is involved in the creation of such an engaging piece.

1:36 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon #2 again - well scribe, can't (and wouldn't want to) argue with you there; however I did notice that the WaPo had a different staff person do the audio interview, so it's not always necessary for the content creator to be a sole individual.

Also, from a business perspective it would be interesting to know what the traffic & revenue was for that piece. My guess is that the magazine (where the core piece was published) still paid for it in terms of advertising sales. Which is still a big issue online.

4:10 pm  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home