Now lots of publishers are offering digital versions of their magazines, I’ve been wonering why they don’t make the move to landscape print copy, so the digital versions fit on screens correctly.
I find it a right PItA zooming and scrolling prtrait content on a landscape screen and as computer user, (appreciate this is no biggie for tablets) there’s no easy/cheap fix.

Eureka moment, or stupid idea?. You decide.

Pick up a magazine and try and flick through the pages landscape.

Adverts are run in multiple publications so aspect ratio needs to be constant.

It would make reading on the loo very inconvenient.

My phone and most tablets are more like portrait than landscape magazines?

That last bit was kind of my point, your phone/tablet can do either with it’s fancy-pants automatic screen orientation, but my laptop is screwed.

I’d bind the narrow side so it still flicked/read in book format rather than upwards,(granted that would be rubbish) but I take your point about the adverts. This will be solved when all future pubications are the new/right way round though!! 😀

Vice used to print their magazine in landscape so I’m sure some online mags will do it. It takes a while to change habbits though.

Its probably not worth monkeying about with the paper version for the benefit of a minority of digital buyers. Really – the solution would be for the non-print version of the magazine to be more like webpages with content that scales and orientates itself to the screen/window, rather than digital proofs of the magazine layout. I guess its a question though as to what proportion of the readership are buying the digital content, if its only 5% then its not worth the labour of doing more than exporting a PDF of the paper version.

Tablets are not magazines and so formatting content for a tablet in order to make it look like a magazine is not the future. Think of it this way. The pinch and zoom function of a tablet is an accessibility feature – you have to use it when the content is incorrectly formatted for the screen ie. it’s too small to read. When you open a DPS spread in a paper mag it opens out to effectively A3 size. A tablet (even the full sized iPads) turned sideways effectively shrinks your A4 pages down to A5 pages and the text becomes unreadable at that size. In my view, if you force readers to use the accessibility features of their device to read your content then you have designed it wrong.

That’s why our tablet version via our App is redesigned so that all the content can be read on the device without having to pinch and zoom. Fans of pinch and zoom can download the PDF version if they want of course.

But the future of publishing is to design the content to make the best of the distribution medium. For paper copies there is the print design with DPS pages and such. For the digital issues for tablets there’s the custom App versions complete with interactive content, videos and expandable galleries (Which can be viewed landscape too). For desktop there’s the PDF and pageflip versions that effectively replicate the print design since most monitors are big enough to display a DPS full A3 size.

For mobiles we have text only versions of the mag since viewing A4 pages on on a mobile is a pinch and zoom nightmare but mobiles are strong at delivering text.

That’s why we have and are continuing to develop a single subscription that delivers the content to each device (including paper) in the best format for that particular device.

If you are delivering a magazine designed for paper on to a tablet or iPhone then that is a publishing fail. Digital mags that do this are referred to as replica mags ie. they are trying to replicate the look and feel of print but in a digital format. If you do that I think you are missing the point.

ps.

Not that we, or anyone else has got this completely dialled yet. The publishing world is in the middle of the biggest revolution in it’s history right now as print moves from being the central medium to being just one of many. We are working on several new distribution methods at the moment and it’s likely that the existing ones we use will be developed, changed, dumped over the coming months and years as technology and reading habits continue to change on an almost weekly basis. For example, issue 86 of Singletrack will be printed differently as we switch from a web offset method of printing to a sheet fed method. It’s a technical change that means the paper quality and the final print itself will improve distinctly. Don’t write off print just yet.. I have a feeling it will be around for a long time to come 🙂

Vice – is that a trade magazine for pimps, or a monthly dedicated to the temporary clamping of metal components in workshops?

And also, good answer Mark. That’s me sticking with the paper mag then, as I don’t want yet another internet accessing gadget in my life.

It was mainly for people who wanted to read about pimps.

Some trustafarian bell end in Hoxton is probably designing one as I type this

Vice – is that a trade magazine for pimps, or a monthly dedicated to the temporary clamping of metal components in workshops?

Its the magazine for people who’s peccadillo is to clamp deputy pimps.

I’ve just added print to my subscription as the tablet/digital is. Is sing something and I am not at all old fashioned or curmudgeonly so it must be the way forward.

Nikon pro mag is printed landscape. Great photography needs to be seen big,
and there are some great pics in Nikon pro that would only work on the size landscape paper can deliver.

The print quality is not up to Singletrack standard though, and could be improved.
I know this stuff.