Tag: Conde nast »

We love The New Yorker. The magazine’s off-beat takes on news of the week by world class writers, the erudite critics, the infusion of short fiction and poetry coupled with charming cartoons, cover art and a complete list of everything cultural happening in Manhattan gives it relevancy and something we seldom get to talk about – re-read value. For iOS and print subscribers yesterday brought great news, The New Yorker updated their app to make it universal, with a new for-iPhone interface. If you haven’t read the magazine before now’s the time. This week’s issue is free on all iOS devices.

The new UI is nothing short of amazing. Using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite magic they have a an iPhone iteration that downloads in seconds and is only 27MB compared with the 183MB the same issue takes up on iPad. As far as we can tell, no content has been omitted or truncated. Other iPhone-only perks, which we hope to see on iPad soon too, include easy sharing of what seems to be all the articles and definitely all the cartoons. We expected readability issues for our, um, how to put this, senior (citizen) writers, but remarkably the text appears slightly larger than on iPad and is extremely clear.

We hope, along with a similar update for iPad readers, Conde Nast continues to bring its magazines in on this deal with Adobe. If this first iPhone New Yorker issue is any indication it’s a match made in digital publishing heaven.

Condé Nast Digital's latest addition to Gourmet is the launch of the official application for iPad, called Gourmet Live, allowing users to explore their "passions for every aspect of food in a brand new way" (Condé Nast). The application is free, includes some recipes to get started, and is available to download now.

"This app brings together the key components of a good meal — great company through access to social networks, the best ingredients in the form of fantastic content, and a beautiful presentation," said Juliana Stock, General Manager of Gourmet Live, and Creative Marketing Director for Condé Nast Consumer Marketing. "We’re serving up content developed exclusively for Gourmet Live and curating the great content of Gourmet magazine in reimagined ways."

Gourmet Live brings more than just recipes, offering news and food-related information from celebrities and even President Obama: "Read about how the Obamas’ eating habits reflect on national food trends. Hear a four-time Oscar nominated actress talk about her love of food, family and butter. Follow one man’s quest for authentic British food in NY and LA" reads yesterday's release.

New covers are updated every day on the application, with new stories and recipes "at least once a week." The application also includes a social networking 'reward' feature, allowing you to save articles and get inside tips if you connect with Facebook or Twitter. The application's design is modern and pictorial, placing emphasis on images on the home page and text within the articles. The layout is clean and the font smart, but there is no interactivity (like check boxes).

Whether this will become another essential utensil in your kitchen, or just an application that you'll try out once, it's free to download and quick to install - meaning there's nothing to lose. Just be sure that your hands are clean when you tap the iPad, otherwise there's going to be even more cleaning to do!

For more information and frequently asked questions, see here.

[Image courtesy of Gourmet]

Conde Nast's Gentleman's Quarterly (GQ) came out a bit earlier on the iPhone than Wired and could be a harbinger of what the future holds for the many Conde Nast publications headed to the iPad. GQ offers an interesting take on layout as well. Their portrait orientation is a new iPad/iPhone specific layout, requiring users to click on individual articles in order to read them and to display the toolbar and click "back" to get back into the reading workflow. This is somewhat similar to the horizontal and vertical workflow in Wired but it includes the additional step of touching into the story and tapping away from it. Turning the iPad into landscape, however, displays the traditional magazine layout almost as if it were a PDF.

[caption id="attachment_38227" align="alignright" width="225" caption="GQ\'s Story Page"]

[/caption]The occasional interactivity in GQ does very little for the overall presentation and the workflow definitely needs work. It's fascinating - trying to merge photos and text with a traditional and manipulable portrait view and the traditional landscape view. GQ's first attempt at the iPad is ambitious. Hopefully future iterations will improve upon the innovations in GQ and take them to the next level.

Conde Nast seems to be ahead of the curve on adapting their magazines for the iPad - both Wired and GQ are Conde Nast properties. Popular Science publisher Bonnier has adopted a universal platform for all of their magazines, Mag+. Conde Nast would do well to have its magazines collaborate on their iPad applications. Both Wired and GQ have interesting takes on the user interface required for a successful iPad magazine app, but neither fully nails the concept. GQ has a slight advantage over Wired with its integrated subscription store, something Wired is sorely lacking. Wired also exists only as an iPad app, whereas GQ manages to shrink the magazine to iPhone size too, reaching a larger audience and experimenting with different forms of content delivery.

GQ is an ambitious attempt to take digital magazines to a user group that may not be quite as tech savvy as Wired's. They do so, however, with a somewhat convoluted user interface that needs refining.