Print is Dead! Long Live (Digital) Print!

Notwithstanding the other elephant in the room, 2020 has once again proved that print media is facing a long battle to stay alive. For many years now, digital media has been the forefront of mass news consumption and the reliability and availability of the printed news and consumer information has been on a long decline.

Print being declared dead is nothing new, but the battle to create an alternative reading source apparently is. Why are businesses not embracing digital magazines?

By combining two media powers, one that is on the decline and one that is unquestionably the future, your business can create a new audience of readers by embracing the e-digital magazine and news consumption market. 

Why a Digital Magazine?

Let us look at this in progressive steps of success – a digital magazine for your business will:

·        Give easy access to live content

·        Make Access Instantaneous

·        Be Portable and Convenient

·        Create a Global Presence

·        Be Interactive

·        Be Cost-Effective

·        Be Measurable

·        Become Sustainable

·        Become Monetized

·        Be Easy to Update

E-Magazine for your Business?

The concept of a digital magazine is not a new one – I am certainly not reinventing the wheel with the idea, but with a lot of content, a great deal of explanation and a ripe audience of avid readers, it is a cost-effective, sustainable and ultimately a fruitful exercise that creates longevity. 

But why consider a digital magazine in the first place?

With the advent of mobile applications and ready to read content available on-demand and on devices on the go, the advantage of a digital magazine is clear. But with 6 golden rules that I ask any business to follow:

1. Focus on the Cover Design

We should not judge a book by its cover. In magazines cases, however, quite the opposite.

The online publishing industry has put cover designing on a high level. Brands keep raising the bar for one another. This is not surprising – the cover is the first and the most important illustration in the magazine and this concerns both print and digital versions.

There are two important goals when designing every magazine cover. The first is to attract the readers’ attention and the second is to express the content, theme, and style of the magazine.

2. Follow the same principle of a print magazine layout 

The variety of devices that readers can use to consume content today, forces publishers to adapt their digital publications to different types of screens: from a huge monitor to the small smartphone. The legibility on all of them should be a priority in magazine page layout designing. This aim can be easily achieved with a touch of knowledge I can give you.

Digital technologies deliver a lot of possibilities in the magazine layout design field, which would not be possible with print publishing. Today, creating an online publication is an exciting process based on disrupting the usual layout conventions, experimenting with new approaches and risking crazy ideas.

3. Understand Digital Design 

The use of proper fonts is essential, and typography itself is viewed as secret knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth. Well-chosen fonts, which create words correctly formatted with spaces, not only make the reading easier but also affect the positive reception of a magazine as a professional one.

Typography has a huge impact not only on readability but also on keeping the reader’s attention, just like the cover. This is all about catching the eye. Moreover, carefully selected fonts allow people to focus on the sense of the article instead of the me-chan-ics of read-ing.

4. Incorporate Rich Media

Even if you decide to put QR codes in your print issues to add fresh value, it would be only a fraction of all extra things you can do thanks to digital publishing. Interactive magazines combine stunning visuals with a truly rewarding user experience. Use rich media to make an article even more compelling. 

5. Use High-Quality PDF documents

Readers’ preferences about the digital magazine design are quite different: one group wishes a print replica without changing layouts while the other wants to get digital reflows which offer readers a superior reading experience.

I am inclined to follow/support the thesis that the magazine should not look like a “digital reprint”, nor should the website. People are used to using the internet for free. A mobile magazine is an optimal mix of exclusive content and great user experience served by Apple mobile devices.

6. Get the Magazine on the App stores 

A user who visits the website of your magazine in App Store is only one step away from making a purchase decision. In Press Pad I ensure that every publisher will appear on the product page in the App Store without the need to own a developer account and without the need to pay anything to Apple Inc. It is important to take care of everything so that publishers can focus only on their publishing process.