Tag : magazine

Isaac and I have been discussing how users consume media and news which has raised some interesting questions around online publishing. Specifically: how we construct content templates, how that content looks when it’s in place, art direction at a micro level and how we can create richer, more engaging and, importantly, more ‘useful’ reading experiences online.

Over the last 4-5 years there has been a gradual convergence in how most newspaper sites construct their article pages. Based on a grid system, they employ a wide central column for the body copy and a number of other columns, usually on the right of the screen, for related information, links to other stories, MPUs, tools, etc. We should know, we’ve designed a number of sites for media owners, as well as countless blogs that conform to these conventions.

The New York Times reports here on the fall in magazines’ ad pages (and no doubt revenues) and sugars the pill with a cute piece of interactive information design (would have been good to have the year by year between ’05 and ’08 though, to see how must was systemic and how much was credit crunch-induced).

Magazines are dead! Long live the magazine! was a gem of a conference organised by Simon Esterson and Jeremy Leslie, and it turned into something of a reunion. Simon was the art director of my book, Magazine Design and Luke Hayman, who also spoke at the conference, was the designer. All three of us haven’t been together since working on the book in 1990. Luke’s now a partner at Pentagram New York and he showed the wonderful editorial design produced by the team at New Yorker magazine where he used to be art director.