The Dodocase. Image: courtesy of www.dodocase.com

You there! What are you reading? Unfortunately in the brave new world of digital publishing, I’ll never know. Gone are the days of my favorite pastime: judging my fellow morning commuters based on what they are reading. I used to have a window into a reader’s world based solely on their literary choices. Now I just have the cold metallic backside of a Kindle or iPad (But to be honest, I do judge you a little bit if you have a Sony E-Reader).

Consider the joy I had just last year in imagining how a person came to be reading a tattered copy of The Amityville Horror. That’s a long book and certainly we know by now it wasn’t really haunted. I give that man credit for saying, “Yes, this is the book I’ve always been meaning to read and today is the day!” or that woman reading Highlights, is she merely bringing it home to her children or does she believe that even adults should be getting their moral cues from Goofus and Gallant? These people lead fascinating lives, if only in my over-active imagination.

Digital publishing offers none of those creative exercises/time killers for voyeurs like me. Their stories are all the same now. Man buys iPad. Man probably talks too much about how great the iPad is to his friends. Man reads something on iPad across from me for the next four subway stops. Could he throw me a bone by just yelling out “I just wish I could write in the margins of this digital Glen Beck book like I could the hardcover version!” or “Whoever is in charge of picking this font for Dwell Magazine should be shot!!!”

No, they just sit there quietly, occasionally flicking their fingers across the screen, reading who knows what. Sadly, I’m not in the know.

Fred Woodward

In 1987 Fred Woodward became the art director of the venerable music magazine, Rolling Stone. Prior to landing his dream job he designed for D Magazine in Dallas, Westward, the Sunday magazine of the Dallas Times Herald, Texas Monthly, and Regardie’s.

Mr. Woodward art directed Rolling Stone until 2001 when he moved on to art direct GQ magazine. The men’s magazine was quickly reshaped into an award-winning publication taking home the Society of Publication Designers’ Magazine of the Year during Mr. Woodward’s second year on the job. His work for GQ continues to win awards in all major design categories.

• Projects: GQ Magazine, 401 Projects
• Resources: AIGA Medalist, ADC Hall of Fame
• Books: Rolling Stone: The Complete Covers, Rolling Stone Images of Rock & Roll, Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits

GQ, Violence of the Lambs article

GQ, Tracy Morgan

GQ, Robert DeNiro article

GQ, Marc Jacobs article

George Lois, 1964

From 1962 to 1972 AIGA Gold Medalist, George Lois, art directed some of the most recognizable magazine covers for Esquire magazine. His tenure started off with a knock-out — The Floyd Patterson knock-out. On his website, Mr. Lois retells the story of the cover creation and the impact it had on the culture. His vision for the covers included some of the period’s hot topics like the martyrdom of Muhammad Ali, sexual equality, Presidential elections, and the Pop Art movement.

• Projects: Esquire covers
• Resources: George Lois website, wikipedia entry, Esquire magazine
• Books: George Lois: The Esquire Covers, Covering the ’60s: George Lois – The Esquire Era

Esquire magazine, October 1962

Esquire magazine, March 1965

Esquire magazine, April 1968

Esquire magazine, May 1969

Dartmouth Alumni Magazine / Dartmouth College

When many people think of the term “blog” they tend to envision a personal journal. But today blogging platforms have expanded into a much broader use, ranging from school websites to online publications. With a built-in Content Management System and templated design capabilities they can be an excellent, cost effective way to develop an interactive online alumni publication. If you are thinking of taking your publication online, or need to update what you already have, a blogging platform may be the solution for you.

By looking at a blog solution, you are opening up options for you and your audience. A web-based publication built on a blogging platform allows your audience to build a community around its content, provides instant reader feedback for you, and connects you with your audience. There is no question that blogging software, such as WordPress, is an excellent resource for creating an online publication on a tight budget. But is it right for your publication? Here are a few things to consider:

Delivery
The blogging platform provides a built-in delivery system known as RSS (Really Simple Syndication). The benefit of RSS is that your audience can subscribe to your magazine’s RSS feed and have it delivered to a reader. Some readers are web-based like Google Reader and Bloglines, or desktop applications like FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, and of course there are mobile device versions like Byline and Pro RSS Reader. If your audience is reading your magazine in their readers it’s crucial that the content be written to encourage clicking on links to bring the reader back to the website. Upon returning to the website the reader becomes a participant in the magazine’s community and is exposed to the visual brand as well as the written brand.

Social Media
Since blogging platforms were built to post articles so easily they have a natural fit with other social media websites and applications. To get your message out to your tech-savy audience consider connecting your online magazine to other blogs (Blogger, Typepad), video- and photo-sharing websites (YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter), and social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter). Most likely some segment of your audience is using some of these websites, so why not let them help promote your content.

Web Address as Brand
It goes without saying that your web address is part of your overall brand. The challenge of using some blogging systems is that your web address might have another brand embedded within it. If your publication’s title is “Magazine Monthly” and you’re using Google-owned blogspot, the web address would be magazinemonthly.blogspot.com. The better option, if you have available resources, would be to not only purchase the domain name of magazinemonthly.com but variations that might be used by your audience. Some variations might be magmonthly.com, magazinemonth.com, and magazine-monthly.com. For the really adventurous brands, try www.domai.nr, where you can find alternative domains, such as magazinemonth.ly or magazi.ne/monthly (monthly would be a folder on the domain).

Customize the Design
There are thousands of free templates built for Wordpress that can be further customized to visually relate to your print publication (if you have one). You may not get exactly what you want, but if you can let go of some of the details, you can get close. The key to using existing templates is the grid. Just as you would start by defining a grid system for your print publication, you need a strong, flexible grid in web design. Find a template with a good grid and let your web consultant apply your visual identity as best he can.

Maintaining It
Many smaller publications cannot afford to build out a customized content management system (CMS). Blogging software comes with an easy-to-use CMS built in. It will take some time to learn the interface of the system, but for the most part it’s a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) application. Everybody’s favorite commands of copy and paste will work to get your text into the text editor. Uploading photos and videos is usually just a couple of extra clicks of the mouse. Many of the systems also allow you to customize access for the many people who maintain the website: For example, administrators who manage the site can access the entire CMS; editors are able to access articles and accept or decline comments; and contributors can post articles.

Alumni magazines are unique in the sense that they deliver content to an existing audience. But the time of one-way conversation is behind us. It is imperative to connect with alumni and engage conversation. By taking your publication online you create something manageable to maintain that is also cost effective.

Vanderbilt Magazine / Vanderbilt University

The McCombs School of Business Magazine / Texas University

Swarthmore College Bulletin / Swarthmore College

Middlebury College / Middlebury Magazine

Outreach Magazine / The Office of Public Service and Outreach at the University of Georgia

HarrisView / The Harris School of Public Policy Studies at The University of Chicago

Hustle. The first issue of 48hr magazine.

The first issue of 48HR magazine is out. If you’re not familiar with this new publication, it’s a magazine experiment that takes advantage of the immediacy of digital technology in order to write, design, produce and print a publication in 48 hours.

The team is made up of magazine staffers from some well-known publications like Wired, GOOD and Rolling Stone with over 1500 submissions from contributors around the world. The theme “Hustle” was announced on May 7. The contributors, anybody who signed-up online, had 24 hours to submit content. The production staff then had 24 hours to put to the pages together and get it to MagCloud, the on-demand printer and partial sponsor of the project.

You can order your very own copy of Issue 0 from the MagCloud website for the low price of $10.00. Check out the 48HR magazine website to stay current with this project.

This has become so much of the norm that when designers want to mimic a magazine aesthetic they must include numerous typefaces at different sizes and colors. These two examples come from the world of comics, which has it’s own visual language for covers. When I saw these at my local comic-book store they stood out for their obvious similarities to magazines and newspapers and dissimilarities to the other comics on the shelf.

Models Inc. cover posing as a fashion mag.

Air cover posing as a newspaper.

lavish design to glorious photography…

The interviewees explain the scrubber, the browser, and social features that allow the reader/user to clip articles and post to social media websites. One of the stand-out interactions is a clip of a user clicking on different thumbnail images in an article that in turn changes the article’s opening image. The user as designer/art director. As I’ve noted before on The Design Shift, the designer in this scenario will have to select multiple successful feature article images and not just one as would be the case in the print edition. If you’re already using an iPod Touch or an iPhone then you’re familiar with the kinds of interactions and gestures. The next challenge for designers will be to consider those experiences as they design interfaces for this kind of content.

The interactions are similar to movements you see in iPhone apps, but the use of rub to reveal an additional level of interface is new to the editorial game. Another new design consideration is the implementation of focus/blur as a way to indicate background information. This provides the user with information about supplementary content, particularly images. The issue of scope of content is always a concern with digital content and the researchers of this prototype separate viewed and non-viewed content at the top of the screen with a series of lines. It’s unclear if this is supposed to be a graphic representation of text or if it will to be the actual headlines of the articles.

The video was created by Bonnier and their design partner, Berg. If Bonnier lives up to their tagline, “to continuously reinvent the art of publishing,” we just might see their video move from concept to product.

A football video plays as the issue is launched and comes to a freeze-frame cropping of the athlete to transition into the cover composition. From there the user can find content via an interactive table of contents, including every guy’s favorite part of SI, the swimsuit issue, which is enhanced with audio and video.

The prototype for the next generation of digital e-readers is a collaboration between Time, Inc. and The Wonderfactory.