It’s been years I’ve read an issue of Wired cover to cover, but with the release of the iPad app, the time had come to revisit an old favourite. From the point of view of a print designer, with years of magazine experience under my belt, what a pleasure it was to explore this new magazine format. Whereas the Popular Science iPad app certainly looked the part of ‘magazine of the future’, I found it cumbersome to navigate, and I lost interest quickly. Wired’s app sits in a sweet spot between traditional print magazine and multimedia experience — with goodies like 360º images that are rotated based on user input, integrated video, and well-placed audio, it all feels… right.
Wired uses what I believe will become the presentation form for tablet-based magazines — swipe horizontally to change stories, swipe vertically to navigate within a story. It feels like a natural melding of a print publication and a web site. Typography is very strong, as we’ve come to expect from the design team, but one minor quibble is that it looks like only one article uses hanging punctuation. I’m definitely a fan of that in typesetting, but make it a consistent thing.
In several points in the mag, a deceptively simple single-page layout is used — to excellent effect. An image portal changes as different caption info is selected (or, vice versa, with different caption portals for a single image). A well thought out use of user input to keep everything on one page. And while this is something that’s pretty much impossible to do in print, there was a quality to the experience that still felt comfortably print-like.
Wired has successfully demonstrated that an electronic magazine for tablet devices is not only possible, but makes for an enjoyable read. I hunkered down with a cup of tea and really dug into the magazine. Something that just doesn’t happen on the web. Perhaps that’s why the first iPad issue includes an article comparing information retention from a long read vs. hyperlinked bits of text.
On the subject of hyperlinking, I’m happy to report that it’s used to pretty good effect. Hyperlinks from the front matter’s ‘Release Notes’ to the referenced articles was great, but I longed for some kind of mechanism to act like a ‘back’ button, so that I could return to the Notes and keep reading, if I wanted. There were also a couple of times where I accidentally hit the navigation that brought me ‘home’ to the cover, and a ‘back’ would serve well there as well.
There were occasions that I wished for a bookmark feature; a longer article that I wanted to come back to, and some sections I wanted to share with my wife. Sure, I can always scrub through the thumbnail version of the magazine, but bookmarks would be very welcome. And in the same vein, I was surprised that there was no ‘search’ function. This would make another useful addition to the electronic reading experience. And a final minor quibble: there’s a word puzzle with a clever reveal function (including ‘are you sure you want to see the answer?’). But I wished for a way to complete the puzzle within the mag either by drawing on top, or typing in my solution.
An advantage of the digital magazine is that the underlying application can be updated an improved in ways that print never could. I look forward to the updates as the design and programming team implements new features, and I’m eager to read the next issue. Of particular interest is how subsequent issues will be downloaded. Will they become available within the app, or will they be separate downloads. In any event I now have an icon for Wired on my iPad. I think it will stay there for a while.
Very nice description of the reading experience Michael. I had the very same feelings when the download finally finished, and I could (navigate, browse, interact, feel, rotate, experience) the Wired iPad App. This, I believe, is history changing.
I’ve only played with this for a few minutes, and I’ll repeat what others have said elsewhere. Holy jeez are there a lot of ads in this. More than the print edition? I don’t think so, and probably not. But if I remember correctly, here everything is a full-screen ad, and I found it a bit overwhelming.
You know, the ads didn’t bother me at all. It didn’t feel like there were any more than the print edition. And most ads in the print magazine are full page. Maybe it’s a side-effect of the loss of spreads, that the ads feel more ‘important’ because of that.
adblocker. I wonder if it works on readers like this?. Great read and insight Michel. it will be a while before i am going to get one, but it’s nice to know that there is a potential for a more uniform reading experience that can be nicely applied to all digi-magazine formats. I think standardizing the platform is going to be key to the usability of such devices. In the long run, i think for reading magazines and newspapers a format like this could be very helpful and more accessible. Books too, but again, in a platform that is universal. As always, there will be the occasional book that needs to be printed, but in general it will make content more accessible and readable. There is obvious concern about piracy of content and writers and publishers of such material loosing a lot of money and going out of business. It will be interesting to see where it all goes. I think for book designers it will be a slight loss of initial satisfaction in the process: We will not see a nice, tangible printed book. We will see our covers and work come and go without much permanence. The joy of seeing what paper, binding and finishing is done to a book will slowly die. Because of the format and speed of acdessibity, the way in which designs for covers will be done will be very much dictated by the new format. Most covers will be viewed as small thumbnails—people will be looking at what rating a book had or reading through reviews of a book to make their choice about reading—not because a cover draws them in. Bookstores will go under. At home, for the typical person, there will be simply a load of digital devices buzzing along. What that does for our health i do not know. But built in bookshelves will become empty. Portfolios for book cover designers will not include a book that had some nice specialty printing or textured materials that add to the experience of the book and it’s life beyond the read. Not sure how humanity will respond to that in the long run. iPads are not exactly recyclable either. We’ll see what happens.
The next wave is to make these devices waterproof so i can go for a swim or sit in a hot tub and get my read on.