This is a discussion I had over recent weeks with my colleague Dan Ichimoto of Heaps Magazine. A culture magazine made in New York and published on iPad for a Japanese audience. He wanted to know what was going on in London with publishing for digital mags.
From: Dan Ichimoto
To: Ash Gibson
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2014 9:54 PM
Hi Ash,
Hope all is well with you and your team.
I’m writing to ask you a few quick questions and wondering if you could answer them
within the range of your knowledge. (whatever you can answer)
1) When you create a digital magazine, what format do you use or you think is the best these days? Smart phone, tablet, web sites or all?
2) What platform do you use or is preferred in the digital magazine market?
Own app, Adobe DPS or any other platform?
3) Is any of the digital magazines you created or involved successful, in terms of monetising.
If they are, how did it become successful?
Such as selling the digital magazine itself, from advertising or any other way by using related tools or marketing strategy on the side.
Or do you know any case you’ve heard that are successfully monetised as a digital magazine?
We are in the process of updating our digital magazine, HEAPS and just wondering what are the
world standard or what other people are thinking nowadays.
We started our magazine as a stand alone app and switched to the Newsstand magazine
but recently we switched back to a stand alone app format and in the process of gathering statistics.
Anyway, hope this email finds you well and if have any questions feel free to ask me.
Thank you in advance and let me know if you are visiting NY.
All the best,
Dan
DAN ICHIMOTO
Art Director I HEAPS
From: Ash Gibson
To: Dan Ichimoto
Sent: Apr 27, 2014, at 3:43 PM
Hello Dan,
Interesting questions. Look forward to seeing what you think of my answers:
1) When you create a digital magazine, what format do you use or you think is the best these days? Smart phone, tablet, web sites or all?
– I cant see how tying yourself to one platform is could be a long term solution. It might be working for some of the bigger brands but, like many things they do, it is not for everyone.
This year the numbers have definitely gone mobile in several different ways: Facebook’s profits from mobile have exceeded their other profits for the first time. More interestingly, I understand people are reading long copy on mobile – which was generally thought of as something that wasn’t going to happen.
I think it is more a case of how many platforms are relevant to you and your audience – plus how many of them are you capable of getting on. There is some argument for some products just being on great responsive sites they are accessible from anything and in someways easier to manage.
2) What platform do you use or is preferred in the digital magazine market? Own app, Adobe DPS or any other platform?
– I have worked in Adobe DPS, with programmers on on HTML 5 through Drupal and in Magplus. I like working in InDesign myself but I think the HTML route is very powerful. Its upside are are incredible production times, great device access and searchable and shareable content. Its downsides are large upfront investment and post-launch inflexibility. It also needs a clever art, code, and production team working together to make really great, brand and content friendly templates.
I think some people are making a fuss about not being able to design things in great detail. Whilst that does make nice looking and enjoyable products. I would argue that production times are killing some products – big and small. For some products at least I think it is about getting great content out to their audiences. Cleverly designing interaction for entertainment is a bit of a distraction. I think people want their content – they are not interested in being entertained by the mag itself.
I think EVO (the car mag from Dennis UK) has a very powerful solution in terms of a website like trickle feed, Cyclist – that I designed – is more traditional in its schedule and look and still generated from HTML/Drupal. It rates very highly in the user reviews.
This is a good piece here about them (although my role is ignored due to no one talking being involved in these projects):
http://clearleft.com/thinks/pointstopixelsatedo/
I haven’t genuinely worked on an own app but think it might be quite powerful used with the HTML route. Discoverability and reading habits are the big challenges of publishing through the app store.
3) Is any of the digital magazines you created or involved successful, in terms of monetising.
If they are, how did it become successful? Such as selling the digital magazine itself, from advertising or any other way by using related tools or marketing strategy on the side.
– This is THE issue. Within my knowledge Cyclist, The Week and EVO all make money in quite different ways. Subscriptions and print being integral.
Possibly more interesting to you – I have being doing the strategy, branding and art direction for this launch (May 2014). They will be about their specialist community, social media channels and media partners:
It will be very interested to see how they do. They are adhering to a lot of what I have written in this short article here:
I am increasingly of the opinion that digital mags need to:
1. Find alternative ways to reach out to audiences that haven’t heard of them – say – promoting in physical spaces.
2. Possibly publish on timing cycles and in formats that gets there audience on less traditional schedules (EVO) and pages (IronLife).
3. Really look at the functionality and types of content that will keep their current and new users engaged. I suspect lees is more is what counts.
4. Work social media, sharing and engagement hard and on brand to drive an exact message about what you stand for – and what you don’t. This is how IronLife are setting their stall up. Its something I am not sure other magazines are getting right – and why being able to share stories is so important – which you can do from HTML editions. In HTML mags you can send anyone a single story and they can read just that and you have made an opportunity for them to enjoy the product and spend with you.
Let me know what you think! I try to make it to New York every year for a few time now – maybe this year!
Cheers,
Ash
Creative director
From: Dan Ichimoto
To: Ash Gibson
Sent: Apr 28, 2014, at 10:49 AM
Hi Ash,
Thank you so much for this detailed notes!
These are great and super helpful.
Let me digest these and will get back to you.
Thanks again!
Dan
Art Director I HEAPS
From: Dan Ichimoto
To: Ash Gibson
Sent: Apr 28, 2014, at 11:26 AM,
Hi Ash,
I forgot to answer your questions.
https://www.google.com/#q=heaps+definition
We are using the name HEAPS as “Stacking, collecting and assembling” of articles, stories and information. Our concept is to inspire young (mid 20s to late 30s age group) Japanese by delivering stacked stories from New York. As you can see on our index page or intro animation that breaks standard looking contents page and each articles heaps (stacks) on the top of the others.
Re: Issue – I didn’t know but our website was under construction over the weekend.
It should be up and running. Could you delete the app (either you have it on Newsstand or as a normal app) and try downloading it again on your iPad?
It’s in Japanese but free app and free contents! Sorry about the inconvenience.
We are in the process of updating the interface and stability now.
Thanks!
Dan
Art Director I HEAPS
From: Dan Ichimoto
To: Ash Gibson
Sent: Thursday, May 8, 2014 4:13 PM
Hello Ash,
Once again, thanks for your detailed notes.
I have been swamped with projects couldn’t get back to you sooner about your answers.
1) About the digital magazine format, we are in transition of moving back from Newsstand to a standard app along with the responsive format.
– We were targeting only iPad users in Japan with gimmicks and inspirational contents but absolutely feeling the importance of delivering our contents to broader readers as you mentioned on your comments.
Now I’m working on the updated interface design for HEAPS. I’ll keep you posted. Recently we had a minor updates (bug fix) on the app. So, if you had a hard time opening HEAPS, please reinstall the latest app and the contents.
2) I love how EVO works!
– It’s a magazine and yet have the blog type of continuous contents feed and simple management interface. Definitely feel the new generation of the digital magazine format.
Since beginning of my involvement with the digital magazine business, I’m always seeking for the best format to draw our reader’s attention (curiosity) just like what Facebook does. (You wanna check what’s up, constantly through out the day). At the same time, deliver the filtered (branded) magazine contents not to dispose like Facebook’s contents. I think the balance between the two will always be our challenge as next generation digital magazine publishers / creators.
Oh, and I’m not forgetting your Cyclist magazine. I was thrilled with the quality of the photos and simple harmony between the UI and its contents. Amazing work!
I’m not a muscle guy : ) but watched the preview of Iron Life. I’ll keep an eye on it.
I’ll keep your 4 notes about what digital magazines need to do: These notes helps me clear my mind to make decisions on anything.
Your detailed comments are truly valuable for us. I’m sharing some of your comments with our team to help us improve HEAPS and it’s always great to know how digital magazine people are approaching their challenge around the world.
I’ll keep my eyes on your blog and I’ll let you know about the UI updates.
Best,
Dan
From: Ash Gibson
To: Dan Ichimoto
Sent: May 9, 2014, at 6:54 AM
Hello Dan,
That is really very interesting.
In the broadest sense I think there is an over emphasis on platforms: although we are in a golden age of opportunity in terms of technical and creative possibilities and low barriers to entry i think that exploring that is not always open to a small publishing business. the costs and risks are too high. However – everyone has to focus on making great content for an engaged audience – big or small, innovative technology or last years.
On your mag: didn’t there used to be a way to swap between the men’s content and the women’s content?
Keep me posted.
Cheers!
Ash
From: Dan Ichimoto
To: Ash Gibson
Sent: 9 May 2014, at 13:05
Hi Ash,
Absolutely agree with the importance of the great contents.
We just had editorial team’s meeting as we speak, about pushing our quality of contents to higher level in all aspect to keep on inspiring our target audience in Japan with stories from New York.
And yes, we can switch between FOR MEN and FOR WOMEN from the index/table of contents page. (Upper right menu button).
Best,
Dan
From: Ash Gibson
To: Dan Ichimoto
Sent: Friday, May 9, 2014 2:18 PM
In the UK we have an expression: “how long is a piece of string?”. I feel like that when people start saying “how do you make good content?”. It is an un-answerable question unless you start doing the work in the context of the product and audience. There is no one answer and that is sort of why journalism and design are still vital – without them no stories are told…. It can’t all be blogs can it?
Good luck!
Ash
ideas/forms/functions 