The Behavior of Magazines
Recently, I read an article by Khoi Vinh, entitled iPad Magazines Go to ’11, expounding on the failure of digital magazines. He suggested the problem is in the glossy presentation layer of the content.
Let’s not be duped into this, again. People love “glossy”. It’s why we pick the iPhone interface over any of its predecessors. Palm had been making quality, smart phones for decades before the iPhone’s release. It was the quality of the graphics, the glossy candy goodness of it all paired with the fully functioning smart phone that finally pushed it over the edge into mass WANT.
When it comes to magazines, we love rich photography and graphics. Editors have been aware of this for decades. They know what sells, and what sells is engrossing graphics. The aesthetics change from audience to audience, and from decade to decade but they serve a purpose. In our research for Mag+2, we discovered that the visual storytelling is as important, if not more important, that the text. It clues people into what they want to read, and also makes the story so much more engaging. It draws people through the magazine, and in general, readers spend more time with the visual stories at the beginning of the magazine, than the straight text at the back. It’s true that when we focus on reading a long-form article we want as little noise as possible, but even there, sometimes infographics are more successful in communicating content than text.
The problem is not that the editors are focusing on rich, visual graphics. The problem is the lack of functionality. People don’t just read their favorite magazines, they use them. Magazines are shared, saved, and used. All kinds of articles are torn out or photocopied; corners of interesting articles are dog eared and put on a shelf just for future use in case they somehow remember what issue that great article was in.
Current digital magazines have not yet tackled this problem.
Print magazines have acknowledged and tried to embraces this behavior. They don’t really have to do anything to enable it – I can physically tear or dogear or scan or sticker all I want – but yet they have taken steps to ensure this activity.
Encouraging sharing:
Mail in subscription cards, more than any one individual could use, because you might give your magazine to your friend.
Enabling organization of torn out articles:
Several magazines, such as Martha Stewart, know that readers tear out articles, and so they’ve developed special ‘tear’ sheets in a standardized format for their readers.
Enabling bookmarking:
Domino magazine provides readers with a sticker sheet so that they can mark those things they want.
Digital magazines give us an opportunity to push this even further. They are already apps, right? I should be able to do all those things I do with my current magazines, only better, faster, and with way more ease. I should be able to instantly tag, share/email, bookmark, rip out and organize my tear sheets. I should be able to look only at the things I’ve saved, regardless of their source.
This is not to say I think the Flipboard model is the future. I love Flipboard. It is a great aggregator of content. However, in doing the research on magazines, specifically talking to people who really do enjoy print magazines, we found that magazines are appealing because they are curated. The fact that the reader can rely on a trusted advisor (read: editor) to compile and deliver information on a given topic is a relief. They don’t have to go out and gather the sources, someone else did. Also, they like to see content presented in an orchestrated order. This method of delivery is innately satisfying. Additionally, readers appreciate that the content is not going to change from when they first sit down to read the magazine til they finally finish with it. The fact that in our rapidly-moving society something stays inert is reassuring and comfortable. People rely on magazines as an opportunity to tune out, as Bonnier calls it “Quiet mode.”
I know many of the publishers are working on the functionality issue. I’m excited to see what happens. In the meantime, we’re playing over here at Kicker Studio with some concepts on how it should be done. I hope I get to show you that soon.
ABOUT KICKER STUDIOCASE STUDIES
SERVICES
TEAM
BLOG
CONTACT US
7 Comments
Funny, I conducted a workshop last week in a design school, about how people read in public transport. One of the group came up with a similar concept with sticker sheets!
What a great post.
I like the idea behind the “quiet mode”. It’s funny to see how newspapers are doing just the oposite: generating content for a quiet consumption (30 minutes, once a day) when online newspaper readers are in “busy mode” (one minute, 30 times a day).
Making subject colleges was one of my hobbies as a kid, which I also used for research during the offshoot of my design career working as a stylist. I had collections of perfume bottles so I could observe their designs. I have pages of lips and eyes so could observe the makeup applications over decades of fashion. Each clip was tagged so I could know the date & publication of my research, some with notes of which clothing lines emerging looks were tied. All were organized into binders for each category. — I am all for digital for a number of reasons, though I do miss doing this with print.
I also know some life advisers will ask their clients to create vision boards of magazine clips and update them over time because it is important to visualize what one wants out of life. Being able to do such things with enough style to create an exciting experience in the digital world would be a big plus.
Thanks for this. Very relevant to a project I am working on this very moment
Very cool. Oh, and it’s domino magazine, btw…not Dwell
Sadly it’s out of print, but it was a really great mag.
It is interesting how generally technology providers seem to not take this kinds of insights into consideration. I don’t know the kind of research they do, but what they usually come up with in the first place is a rather abstract way of presenting and using things. As if the techie paradigm is foremost in their minds as opposed to the natural hands-on approach. It’s like they first try to adapt the human to the tech. No wonder, when something finally comes out that takes into account that humans relish a well rounded blend of both tactile and visual, that’s a winner. For example, the iphone over previous smartphones.
Likewise in the digital content world – whoever will take into account that people like to see but also to feel and touch, will come up with a winning product. People like the rich feel of a glossy magazine. But they also like to tear out articles, sticker mark, dogear pages etc. I don’t see why these functions can’t be incorporated into an app. It would be probably a good idea to keep these digital actions as similar to the natural actions as possible. Anyways, just my two cents.
@GRJ You are correct! Thanks for catching that.
Post a Comment