September 9th, 2008
Esquire magazine are celebrating their 75th anniversary with a unique e-ink cover panel, literally merging print and digital content delivery in one package - Details & videos at Esquire online
The product itself is pretty simple, a standard e-ink display delivering a flashing black & white message. It’s probably more innovative as a marketing tool than as a genuinely useful addition to the magazine, but hey, they’re the 1st to have done this and you’ve got to start somewhere.
Interestingly, in the true spirit of the Internet, hackers have got their hands on it already (see Make blog post) I love that this hacker ethos can creep into such a traditional medium, not in any negative sense, but in the fact that as soon as there’s an opportunity to play with or modify the medium, there are users out there who’ll do it, which is exactly what allowed the web to develop at such a rapid speed.
For a full e-ink magazine experience, publications such as Time, Newsweek & Forbes are now delivered on Amazons ‘Kindle’ e-ink reader. However, the technology doesn’t yet serve the needs of full-colour glossies. One day though…
Update 15/10/08: This just in - How to make an e-paper clock out of Esquire magazine
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September 8th, 2008
Here’s the latest Harper’s Bazaar cover, featuring Liv Tyler in an Amy Winehouse homage. Which has gotten me to thinking that Amy’s greatest legacy may not be her music, but to have lent her name to an eye make up style. No matter that Siouxsie Sioux did it first, I have it on good authority that when older schoolgirls bundle through the gates at the end of the day, the first thing they do is reach for the khol and ‘put their Amy’s on’. Which instantly suggests an interest in all sorts of exotic lifestyle choices. Much like Sylwia from our very own IPC Blue Sky cafe, who has been seen to sport them on occasion.
Good cover though. Aside from it’s sheer visual brio, I suspect that our enduring interest in all things Amy will give this issue a big fat sale.
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September 8th, 2008
‘God Bless America” proclaims the strap line Woman’s World, one of America’s biggest mainstream weeklies. This cover is not some 70’s museum piece, it is their current cover, give or take a week. And what a cover it is. Every single coverline has an exclamation mark! - 24 in all. Which has to be some kind of record on both sides of the Atlantic. As with my earlier post on US Glamour, there’s more to this cover than meets the eye, to discover why, Read the rest of this entry »
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September 4th, 2008
Jimmy Bullard’s call-up this week into Fabio Capello’s England squad for the World Cup qualifiers reminded me of a recent round of research that clearly illustrates how delicately we must handle our editors when their brands are under scrutiny.
The thing is, when you’re creating stimulus material to take into research - new franchises or features usually, sometimes cover treatments - the work you are undertaking is completely counter-intuitive to the brand guardian. He or she has been thoroughly schooled in producing work which completely satisfies the customer - work that answers all the questions, if you like. If they weren’t doing that effectively, let’s face it, they’d be out of a job. Read the rest of this entry »
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September 4th, 2008
Before the day is out and because anyone who has any interest in web technology has already blogged on it, Google Chrome is out and about. But I would just like to draw your attention to the supporting documentation. Read about the technology. It has been drawn by Scott McCloud. He authored Understanding comics and Reinventing Comics, which provide a great insight into comic history and aesthetics. If you read his books, the possibilities of their being parallels with conducting a narrative through panels and pages in a comic books and creating user journeys through webpages and web applications seem very exciting. Ofcourse any discussion of sequential art, comics, demands the acknowledgement of Will Eisners giant influence. But on a personal note as a web designer who has never grown out of comics, I am overjoyed to see Scott McCloud get this job, and what a great job he has done.
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September 3rd, 2008
People are now making what they want of your customer silos. People online have more options than ever before to access the information they want. The tool they most often use is a search engine, and with mission statements like this “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” who can blame them. Read the rest of this entry »
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September 2nd, 2008
We are constantly being reminded - not least by the current tough trading climate for print brands - that our customers have way more options than they used when it comes to accessing their information and entertainment. And we are quite rightly encouraged to monitor all these choices with a view to making absolutely sure we maximise our opportunities.
In some cases this can mean embarking upon a rigorous course of brand extensions - witness NME’s recent forays into TV, radio and staging events. In other cases, though, it can mean looking at changing your core proposition to try and capture different facets of the market. And herein, if research tells us anything, can lurk very real dangers. Read the rest of this entry »
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September 1st, 2008
Reading Mazy’s blog about making happiness your business model reminds me of a series of recent research groups we conducted in deepest sarf London around one of our most esteemed pillar brands.
The brand has heritage, a deep relationship with its readers and a real place in their lives so it was fascinating to hear two groups of ladies - one in their upper 40s to mid-60s, and one in their early 30s to late-40s - talk through the pages. Read the rest of this entry »
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August 31st, 2008
I came across this excellent presentation:
‘Happiness as your business model’,
by Tara Hunt (founder of Citizen Agency, author of HorsePigCow)
The concept of providing users with an experience which makes them happy is something which the magazine business is very adept at, where readers perceive purchasing their favourite magazine as a ‘treat’ and its consumption as a pleasure.
This got me thinking about the way we translate magazine brands to web, and how the concept of branding is frequently interpreted as applying the logo and colour scheme to a web proposition, rather than applying the ‘Brand Experience’, i.e. how you’d like your users to feel when they visit your website (and I’m guessing happiness would be a big factor here?!)
But how might we do this?
Eliminating confusion and frustration by implementing good usability is one aspect, keeping things simple, by having a clear proposition in a simple format (such as a blog) is another, delighting and engaging users with valuable content another, and so on.
But as a starting point, addressing the ‘pillars of happiness’ and eliminating the ‘contributors to fear’ when looking to create the magazine brand experience online, should provide a solid approach to delivering a genuinely pleasurable user experience.
Check it out & let me know what you think!
Tags: usability
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August 29th, 2008
The staff at women’s fashion magazine Elle are doing a talk at the Barbican on Sept 11, details here.
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