While I have no doubt that the people creating digital magazines now have a mindset that print is of a higher quality, I have to think some of the current design of these apps comes down to a few more practical points:
- They don’t know yet what’s going to become of digital magazines and whether or not it’s going to be profitable for them.
- At least partially because of 1., they haven’t hired people to make up a different digital layout. And, since they are currently spending a lot of money working on the current layout, it’s easier to stick with that.
- From a user stand-point, it’s certainly easier to refer to certain sections of an article if the layout is similar from app to print.
- And, while the apps he talks about, Instapaper and Reeder, certainly have layouts which help you concentrate on reading, they are certainly not “pretty”. And “pretty” is part of the magazine experience (or, at least it has been for some time now).
I don’t love the New Yorker app, and I understand a lot of the criticisms made about it and others like it, but I don’t find that it really limits my reading (time is much more a factor there).
I think it’s going to take a little time, and a few wildly innovative magazines that will probably fold quickly (because they’ll be based too much on new design and not on substance). But, we’ll soon be in a place there digital is the norm and print is the anomaly. And, there will be a new design paradigm that comes along with that.
Comments are closed.