Getting Digital Publishing Right: The Secret Sauce
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Everyone is embarrassed by their baby pictures. The Web should be, too; check out this candid shot of a Geocities page from 15 years ago, when the browser was still in diapers and Ajax something you used to clean the shower. It's like a Greatest Hits collection of every bad gif, font and color scheme its designers could get their hands on.
We stumbled across this Internet flashback when thinking about another collection of first-generation products, this time involving the iPad. We were wondering about the state-of-the-art in iPad digital publishing, and what lessons it held for publishers and other content creators as they embark on the new era of tablet computing that's upon us. (Like most people, we expect the iPad to be just one of many tablets the marketplace will accept.)
Our conclusion: There are a lot of similarities between the early days of the Web and the start of tablet era, especially the excitement and the sense of challenge and boundless opportunity.
But one thing is different: The design. Because this time, people are doing it right.
If the majority of the design from the dawn of the Web is good only for a headache, many of the first-generation examples of iPad digital publishing could sit comfortably in an art museum. That might be the result of simple osmosis; Apple has such a strong reputation for design, and surely, a bit of their genius rubs off on everyone working in their ecosystem.
It's a good thing
But it's also as a result of a lot of hard work by talented graphics professionals, user interface experts and others. Two of our favorite examples are the Martha Stewart Living and Wired Magazine apps for the iPad, and it's worth spending time discussing them, because there are many lessons to be learned.
(We at Universal Mind didn't work on either project, so we aren't tooting our own horns here. We're just huge fans).
Everything about these apps embodies what you come to associate with each publication: calm, understated perfection in the case of Martha Stewart, and cutting-edge, graphically dazzling excitement with Wired. The apps are both in their own way simple, useful, innovative and perfect representations of these two venerable print brands.
Here's a video of the Martha Stewart rollout:
In the case of Martha Stewart, the typography is clean, the graphics are stunning and the mixture of still photographs and multi-media interactivity is engaging without being ostentatious. The ads are as tasteful as the editorial, gently pulling you in and making you want to engage more directly with the product and the brand behind it. Everything moves and flows logically, beautifully and smoothly. There's a time-lapse image of a flower slowly opening that, all by itself, is probably destined to become a sly alpha test for an elegant pre-loading experience. In fact, consider it a glimpse of things to come.
It isn't all pretty pictures, either; there are some genuine technical innovations that take advantage of the power of the new iPad technology to make life easier for its users.
Take recipes, a Martha Stewart staple if there ever was one. You'd think there wasn’t much you could do with a recipe; after all, they have been in mass circulation since Escoffier. The team of designers and programmers at Martha Stewart had the clever idea of applying in-line scrolling to the step-by-step instructions. Ingredients and execution all on one screen. Anyone who cooks will immediately realize the genius behind that simple innovation.
Learning from Martha
So what's the point of this fan mail? There are two, actually.
The first is to point out that iPad digital publishing experiences like the Martha Stewart magazine are the rule and not the exception. To be sure, the iPad has its fair share of design turkeys. Most apps, though, are of very high quality.
If you're entering the digital publishing market, that means your readers will approach your product with very high expectations, and with a set of well-developed aesthetics about what is good and bad. Don’t think for a minute that you can get away with the tilt-a-whirl design approach of the Internet circa 1995.
Our second point is that this sort of good design starts with good publishing tools, but goes way beyond them. Just like anyone could create a Geocities page, anyone can create a digital publishing app. But it's much tougher to create the kind of "wow factor" that will make it stand out from everything else that we can expect to published on the flood of new competing tablets.
There is a "secret sauce" to high-quality digital publishing. It involves using all of the tablet tools at your disposal -- for text, pictures, videos, sound and interactivity -- to tell a story, to create a delightful experience, forging the sort of powerful connection with your brand that Martha Stewart's and Wired's apps do with theirs. Not surprisingly, it's less about publishing and more about experiences.
Creating this emotional connection with your users isn't easy. But doing so is our passion here at Universal Mind, and we have some pretty good ideas on what will be successful and what won't. Every time we come across another great app for the iPad, we realize how high the bar is. But we enjoy challenging ourselves.
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