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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
GQ for iPhone Previews Smarter Digi-Mag Approach .jpg) intriguing ideas about how to handle deeper magazine content on mobile platforms large and small. And so far as we know it is the first mobile app to be certified by the Audit Bureau of Circulation as a replica edition that can be counted toward paid circulation. Along with the GQ mobile launch this week, Condé Nast also announced a strategic alliance with digital publishing company Adobe to build the “next generation of digital magazines,” CEO Charles Townsend says. These new versions of familiar newsstand brands are expected to launch on a range of portable devices, from laptops to netbooks and “electronic color slate devices” the company says will debut next year. Wired will be the first magazine to benefit from the Adobe partnership. CN will develop a digital version of the magazine on the Adobe AIR platform, a runtime technology that operates both inside and apart from a connected Web browser. For now, the GQ iPhone app seems to be a test ground for some of the ideas we would expect to see in the later digital magazine iterations. The full Table of Contents meets the reader at startup when the phone is in portrait orientation. Each TOC item clicks through to the relevant section which itself can have subsections. All five of the month’s newsstand covers are reproduced here. For articles the default text size is quite small, but the interface lets you adjust type size so that the setting sticks throughout your interactions with the magazine and on subsequent restarts. The designers devised an interesting solution to the problem if integrating images with article text. Each article launches with a superimposed menu at bottom with thumbnails of the available still or video media associated with the article. The thumbnails retreat after a while but a “View Media” button is always visible on the bottom menu to access the multimedia materials. Less impressive is the captioning, which involves tapping a “View Caption” button and having the image flip to reveal the relevant text. Many other apps choose the more seamless translucent overlay of caption text that keeps the image dark but visible while you read. The GQ app tries to sweeten the multimedia deal with a handful of extra photos for some features and two short video clips. If there is a glaring weakness to the app it is the obvious dearth of interactivity. There are no content-sharing mechanisms or even rudimentary bookmarking. On the one hand, the app tries to recreate the feel of a magazine environment, which is a worthy ambition. But on a digital platform, how insulated do we want to be? Without content sharing or customization of some kind the app lacks the personal feel that is vital to mobile content. Wouldn’t it be great if a user could turn an image from the magazine into his own iPhone wallpaper or send the page to his girlfriend to consider as his next birthday gift? Doesn’t a multimedia platform deserve at least an audio greeting from your friendly editor, perhaps some background music here and there? As a decade of “digital magazines” have already demonstrated handily, the concept of electronic facsimile can be overdone.  Which is not to say that the Conde Nast folks are asleep at the switch here. Far from it. Clearly the most innovative use of the iPhone interface in the app is the dual-mode functionality. There are actually two different viewing modes in one app. In portrait mode, you view GQ in formats that are very mobile-friendly and parsed neatly for the small screen (described above). But when you turn the phone on its side to landscape mode the current content switches into full magazine mode, reproducing the two-page layout of the issue. Every page and every ad is reproduced, and many of the ads let you click through to the advertiser’s Web page. A pop-up slider lets you fast forward to any page. In fact, you can swipe your way through the entire magazine page by page in landscape mode, switch to portrait mode, and the app drops you into the same content in the magazine but now in a format that is more conducive to mobile reading. The reader can browse and drill deeper at will. The calibration between the two orientations is seamless. We believe that the technical iPhone developers’ term for this effect is “way, way cool.”Condé Nast has also monetized the application in multiple ways. A $2.99 cover price is the initial cost of entry. The issue itself is sponsored by Grey Goose Vodka, whose ads come up occasionally between content pages. The ads invite you to click through to the Grey Goose mobile page, but an in-app browser keeps you in the GQ interface throughout. One of the videos also includes a pre-roll ad for Gillette. GQ for iPhone is a smart first step toward re-imagining the magazine for digital. Its priorities still are weighted heavily toward older media and trying to capture that print feel on another platform. For now it is safe to say that recreating print in digital is more of a publisher’s fantasy than it is a demonstrated desire on the part of consumers. Only time, and perhaps larger display formats, will tell us whether readers will consider even a smarter digital magazine a welcome extension of a brand…or just a neat and disposable trick. .jpg) If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com |
 Manager, Digital Media, NCC Media
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