Monday, March 22, 2010

Living iPad Magazine

See here is my fear for iPad content: trying to liven up articles with moving graphics. It seems to me that the graphics, being much more stimulating than text is, makes you lose the interest in reading in that moment, instead of making you want to read. What do you think?

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread - iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.


Here's a Sports Illustrated demo, which seems reasonable.

2 comments:

drainbrain said...

If the iPad is as revolutionary as it has been punted (and Jobs often wins against the bank) then in time a variety of new glossaries, new paradigms, and new vocabularies that reaches out and touch a wide range of different audiences will all evolve.

There will also be niche genres, and specialist applications that develop. It happened in print, radio, movies, TV, the web... well, you get my drift.

I don't like sex or American football (OK, I lied about one of those) but I could see beyond the subject matter of your two examples to recognize the value in both formats.

I find even line illustration unnecessary if the text is cerebral enough--Scenes in America Deserta by Reyner Banham for example.

The first edition of The Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin had only nine pencil sketches, and by the third edition the author was moved to write: "...the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naively describes as sublime or beautiful features which the plates represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise the the Architecture, and not to the illustrations." I wish I still had either edition in my possession.

If the iPad can rise above the medium being the message (and I am beginning to soften on that, partly thanks to seeing the possibilities as early 'proof of concept' content samples appear) then I think it has a great future.

Thank you for your continuing discourse on the subject.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

And thank you for weighing in.
(I'm glad I'm not just boring *everybody* to death with my interest in this.)

The 'pad is a blank slate. Umm, literally! So doubtlessly a lot of crass crap will appear on it, but also a lot of worthwhile creations and content. For my money, even seen simply as an ebook reader, it's a breakthrough, because it's way faster and better than the Kindle. (I can't get past the grey "paper" and the sluggishness of the Kindle.)