Once you have determined the DNA of a publication, examine how it can be reinforced in its tablet version.
So you now are ready to start telling stories on the tablet, creating a news app and exploring all that this platform makes possible. The first step is to identify your publication’s “signature.” What makes it distinctive and special? Whatever that is, make sure that transfers to your iPad design.
As I conduct workshops in newsrooms across the world, this is where we first concentrate our efforts. A newspaper or magazine is known for specific offerings—either it is the ultimate authority on a region of the country or on a particular subject (fitness, fashion, children, wine). You must make sure that the DNA of your publication transfers 100 percent. Let’s face it: The average newspaper or magazine creating its own app already possesses the essential tools—the stories to tell—to create a great experience for the user.
Former Wired magazine creative director Scott Dadich, whose publication was one of the first to create an iPad app, said this about his magazine’s explorations with tablets:
The storytelling methods that we use to make magazines today—the tools, the words, the pictures, the headlines that we all use—are every bit, or even more important going forward. It’s not a case where we’re dropping all of the things that we know and having to go learn a whole new language. It’s just using those tools in different ways and experimenting.
What constitutes the DNA of your publication? It is that which makes it special and unique, and for which users may be willing to pay.
For example, as we worked with the app for the Gulf News, in the United Arab Emirates, our search for its DNA led us to this statement: “the ultimate authority on UAE and Middle East news.”
For the South China Morning Post, published in Hong Kong: “the authority and reference for Hong Kong, China and Asia news and information.”
And for Media24, in South Africa, a group that publishes many newspapers and magazines, the workshop zeroed in on one of the publications, Fairlady, and its DNA: “the magazine for and about South Africa’s women.”
Sometimes, reinforcing the DNA of a publication means exploring the tablet’s possibilities with a subset of your content. For example, both Forbes and Entertainment Weekly focus on lists in their apps. Forbes’ lists, such as that of the four hundred richest people in America, become fully interactive, able to be re-sorted by wealth, age, residence and passions, and include additional photos and the latest news stories. Entertainment Weekly’s Must List is a simple, graphic curated list of the ten things to watch or read that week.
Another title that has fully embraced its unique DNA is Spin magazine with its Spin Play app. Many musicians mentioned in the app are accompanied with a promotional track that you can play in the background as you read about them. You can even dispense with the articles altogether, navigating the issue purely through the music contained within.
One of the most interesting aspects of news app design, unlike that of news websites, is that no two apps should be visually or functionally identical. I remember when websites were first developed in the 1990s. My first reaction was that many failed to capture the spirit, the visual identity and the uniqueness that a printed newspaper or magazine had. True, the logo was always a reminder of what this newspaper or magazine was, but even in this case, some companies introduced portals or named their online edition something different from the newspaper, and the identity was lost.
Of course, in the years since the first news sites appeared, there have been a number of sites that have engaged a more visual aesthetic. The Boston Globe and Frankfurter Allgemeine are two current favorites, with their strong use of white space and clear hierarchy. Still, too many news websites have looked the same. It has been difficult, when surfing for a half hour and going from website to website, to get a sense of brand, to recall where one has obtained information at a certain moment.
This is not the case with news apps. No two apps should be alike, and, almost always, they are not. News apps maintain their distinct personalities, matching the printed product that inspired them and establishing that instant visual recognition that we develop with publications we become acquainted with on a daily or weekly basis. Designers, too, must emphasize this sense of uniqueness.
Updating is a subject where there are not many easy answers: Should a news app be updated constantly, once a day or more often? At seminars, workshops and conferences, this is a question that lingers. Is the expectation of the user that this app will have the very latest news?
Or, if, as research indicates, the iPad is used more heavily during the prime-time evening hours and treated more like a book than a traditional newspaper, should the material that appears in the app be more analytical and visual in nature? I tend to view the issue with an open mind, willing to be convinced that constant updates are necessary. However, the iPad news apps that we have collaborated with adhere more closely to the concept I refer to as editioning, in which the app presents one to three curated editions each day rather than a constantly updated and less edited stream of new stories.
One thing is for sure: You must state your intentions about news updates early in the process of creating a news app. This will help with the planning and designing.
I often say that it takes a village to produce a good app. From the start, an app is not the type of project in which one gathers the editorial team and the creative efforts take off. Not at all: Here we must depend on the talents of various people with specialized skills.
We must have good journalists, who respect print, who know the value of a good story and the impact of excellent writing. In addition, we must have the visual team, with special emphasis on a photo and video editor, a visual thinker who can translate story ideas into visual surprises. We must have the technical people who can tell us more about the enormous potential of the platform and inform us of its limitations.
All of this because the tablet is a multigenre platform: It allows users to see, watch and read short and long texts and to interact with it.
There is not any one person in a team that can satisfy all the requirements imposed by the potential of the tablet. Therefore, we need to approach the platform as what it is, with multiple layers of possibilities to explore stories better and to make them more appealing to all the senses.