The Daily Arrives

At last, The Daily is here. We've known about it at Joe Zeff Design for some time, having been engaged by News Corp. last fall to contribute artwork for prototypes. It's changed considerably since then, yielding an application with many plusses and minuses. On the plus side, the app is attractive and brimming with content. A Cover Flow-like carousel turns every page into an entry point, with labels that show which pages have already been viewed. The user’s location is billboarded on the home screen alongside the hyperlocal time and temperature — a nice personal touch. Engagement opportunities abound — polls that yield real-time results, interactive crossword and Sudoku puzzles, and real-time tweets on many of the pages. Sports fans will appreciate the customizable sports dashboard with live news feeds about your favorite teams. The Daily includes advanced sharing tools, enabling readers to give an article a thumbs up or down and even record an audio comment, offering the potential to turn every article into a conversation.

Above: Step right up to the carousel of content.

Pretty impressive. It’s easy to see where Rupert spent $30 million in development costs.

That said, there’s considerable room for improvement.

The content feels old. Because it is old. It makes no sense to build a state-of-the-art app around the anachronistic daily news cycle. Online news should reflect immediacy, with up-to-the-second words and pictures. One article cites Punxsutawney Phil’s accuracy rate but fails to tell the reader whether the groundhog saw his shadow this morning. (He didn’t.) That’s inexcusable. If the technology exists to put Twitter feeds on news pages and real-time wire copy on sports dashboards, then those same tools should be used to provide updated, time-stamped content in every section, including the front page headline and image.

The navigation could be sharper. Throughout the app, graphics that look like buttons don’t act like buttons, which frustrates the user. On one page there’s literally a flashing red button in the middle of the page. It does nothing other than flash red. A graphic promoting the sports dashboard fails to take you to the sports dashboard, and a buttonlike callout teasing the daily puzzles turns out to be just that — a tease. Web links that appear in text are just as untappable.

Above: They sure look like buttons.

The app contains video and audio summaries of the news that seem unnecessary. They are buried under the carousel, completely disconnected from the rest of the publication, and redundant to the content that appears elsewhere in the app. A much better use of these features would be to update them hourly.

I'm hopeful The Daily will evolve, and push other newspapers to keep pace. With all of the fanfare surrounding The Daily, I was hoping for a truly interactive newspaper — “new journalism” as Rupert himself put it. I’m not seeing it. Yet.

Update: The Day After, 8 a.m.

Day 2 is definitely an improvement over Day 1. Few if any fake buttons — today the sports dashboard link works. Nice interactive features: a pre-shooting interview with Gabby Gifford; a 360 view from an unaffordable luxury box at the Super Bowl; a fun video interview with Fox Sports cousins Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long about their Super experiences; an invitation to submit letters to the editor via e-mail; and more.

And The Daily reports that the groundhog did in fact see his shadow. A day ago.

WoodWing World Tour

Joe Zeff Design is excited to be part of the WoodWing World Tour, which arrives in San Francisco on March 9 with insight and information about tablet publishing. WoodWing is a Netherlands-based company that creates software to help publishers efficiently push content to iPads, Android tablets and other platforms. Its clients include Time Inc., American Express Publishing, and Project, the highly publicized iPad-only magazine produced by gazillionaire Richard Branson. We've used WoodWing's Enterprise Publishing System and Digital Magazine Tools to create our own apps, and to help clients pursue unique publishing strategies that optimize content, technology and business opportunities.

The San Francisco event brings together an authoritative group of speakers:

Roger Black, the influential newspaper and magazine designer, presents his views on the evolution of publication design. Over the past year Roger has played a particularly active role in that evolution, starting several companies to meet the needs of digital publishers: Webtype, Ready-Media, Treesaver and Nomad Editions. Roger is not only smart, he's sensible, and we're looking forward to his take on where publishing goes from here.

Rebecca McPheters, CEO of McPheters and Company, will discuss best practices for digital publishers. Her company's iMonitor service tracks more than 1,000 apps in 40 countries and recently chose the 10 best apps of 2010 — seven of which were produced using WoodWing's Digital Magazine solution. Jochem Wijnands of TRVL Magazine will talk about his popular iPad-only magazine, which follows an a la carte approach toward magazine publishing by offering apps containing individual articles instead of the traditional mix of content. According to Computerworld, it's an "iPad publishing success story."

Our session will focus on digital publishing strategies that maximize the creative, technical and business opportunities afforded by the iPad and other tablets. The presentation is intended for anyone interested in developing content for tablets, whether you're already producing apps or just beginning to explore the possibilities. We'll provide insight into how to reinvent your content, workflows and business models to take best advantage of the tablet publishing opportunity.

WoodWing's leadership will showcase their newest Enterprise and Digital Magazine releases, which currently power nearly 200 iPad apps, as well as enhancements intended to provide similar functionality for Android devices and HTML5 browsers. You won't want to miss Channel Evangelist Jeff Gapp's demonstration of how HTML5, JavaScript and WoodWing's Digital Magazine Tools converge on the tablet to deliver enhanced interactivity. We've been fortunate to work directly with Jeff to inject HTML5 into our own projects, leveraging two of WoodWing's biggest strengths — its extensibility to work with other code, and Jeff himself.

Advance registration is required but admission to the World Tour event is free. Register here, and learn more about the two-day workshop (which is not free) that follows the conference — an opportunity to build your own app project using WoodWing's Digital Magazine Tools and take it home on your own iPad.

10 Takeaways from the SPD Judging

As a judge at the Society of Publication Designers' annual competition this past weekend, I had the opportunity to scrub, scroll and swipe through hundreds of iPad apps and websites over the course of an exhausting yet exhilarating day at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The contest continues to attract thousands of print entries — far more than the 250 or so digital entries that our jury evaluated, a number that will undoubtedly soar over the next few years. We were the first to judge magazines published on the iPad, and encountered the best, the worst, and everything in between. Ten takeaways, in no particular order:

1. Generally speaking, tablet apps are significantly harder to access than websites. They must be bought, downloaded, launched and navigated. Each has its own learning curve, required of experienced users as well as new ones. To justify the effort and expense, apps should reward the user with enhanced interactivity, quality multimedia, better usability — something that makes them more worthwhile than what can be accessed more easily on a phone, website or newsstand. That's not happening as much as it should.

2. It is one thing to target readers, and another to engage users. The best apps did the latter, and instead of simply displaying photography they allowed users to rotate objects, show and hide captions, turn on and off layers, flip through slideshows and hear audio. Active imagery (that responds to touch) was more satisfying than passive imagery (that doesn't respond to touch), as it put the consumer in control of the experience and encouraged interaction.

3. Martha Stewart produces stunningly beautiful apps. I'm not much for cookies and peonies, but Martha's minions put on a great show.

4. Check out TweetMag, which seems to be the second coming of Flipbook, which should make every pubilsher consider whether they are doing enough to combine their own content with user-generated content in order to deliver a uniquely personalized experience.

5. We were provided earbuds, and I found that I used them frequently when reviewing websites and hardly at all when reviewing apps. The websites we reviewed tended to integrate audio with photography and video, while the apps kept audio and video trapped in picture boxes retrofitted from their magazine layouts. Eventually, digital magazines will evolve into interactive experiences in which covers become doors and pages become rooms. Marie Claire inspired hope by producing an app that looked nothing like a magazine. Hopefully more will follow.

Intermission.

The digital judges . . .

. . . and our view of Jurassic Park . . . I mean, the print judging!

End of intermission. Please return to your seats.

6. It's more honest to embed multimedia content into apps, resulting in bigger filesizes, than to deliver smaller apps that require streaming content. Users are quickly frustrated when confronted with blank boxes — IOUs for content that should have been part of the app they downloaded but instead appear as "Loading" and "Internet Connection Required" messages. Better to make consumers wait once for the entire app that puts all of the content on their iPad than to make them wait every time they land on a screen full of IOUs for streaming content that is contained elsewhere. Right?

7. The New York Times represents the evolution of our species. Its ability to consistently produce superior video, photography and infographics, each bursting with conceptual brilliance that is so spare yet so smart, is an inspiration.

8. Usability matters. Many times I'd quickly swipe from page to page only to get stuck on a specific page because the designer put a slideshow under my finger. Other times I'd scroll vertically into an article only to get lost, not knowing whether my swipe into the next page was putting me where I needed be in order to see every page. (See Takeaway No. 9.) Design not only for the 8 million people who already own iPads, but the millions more who will buy them and use them for the first time. If you confuse them, you'll lose them.

9. If magazines insist on pages that scroll vertically instead of flowing content onto an adjacent screen, they must figure out ways to make that decision clearer to the user. It's too easy to miss content, leaving the reader feeling shortchanged, or stupid, or both.

10. There was considerable debate about the merits of publishing both vertical and horizontal magazines. It's an added burden for exhausted staffs now struggling to add an Android edition to their strained workflows. One art director said his publication published bi-dimensionally because Apple required it, another said that advertisers liked the idea of seeing their ads twice. One justification for publishing vertical-only magazines overhead at the lunch table: "You wouldn't turn a magazine on its side, why would you turn an iPad magazine on its side?" Interesting point.

Many thanks to SPD, particularly executive director Emily Smith, Pub 46 co-chairs Andrea Dunham and Brandon Kavulla, digital chair Jeremy Lacroix and SPD Veep Josh Klenert. See you at the Gala!

A Recipe for Hotcake-Selling Magazine Apps

OK, we get it. iPads are selling like hotcakes but iPad magazines are not. Here's why: 1. Publishers have opted to compete against themselves. There's not enough product differentiation between the iPad and print versions of most magazines. It's an either/or decision for the consumer — buy your favorite publications on the newsstand or through iTunes. Yes, the iPad version sings and dances, but the table of contents is pretty much identical. The result: cannibalized readership.

2. Old habits die hard. We've been reading magazines on paper for nearly 300 years; it's likely to take more than nine months for those behaviors to change. In recent years, consumers have become accustomed to paying for content at the newsstand, gorging on it without cost over the Internet, or acquiring it cheaply through subscriptions. Which brings me to my next point . . .

3. Digital magazines need a subscription model. Bad. Without subscriptions, consumers are required to pay full price for new issues and take the time to download them. That's asking a lot when a discounted print version shows up in your mailbox every week or month — with the flexibility to grab it on the go, share it with a friend, or leave it on your coffee table for a leisurely reading experience.

Nos. 2 and 3 will come with time — the subscription model may be only a few days away with the much-anticipated launch of Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper. But No. 1 is at the top of our list for a reason — the sales figures will continue to disappoint as long as publishers are singularly focused on republishing content for as many new devices as possible.

The recipe for hotcake-selling digital magazine apps?

Reinvention.

Think of digital publishing as a complement to your print operation, not as a replacement. Create new products that leverage new technology instead of simply recycling existing products to run on tablets.

Follow the example set by O, The Oprah Magazine. Its newest app, SketchBook O App for iPad, is a free drawing and painting app created in partnership with Autodesk, as an extension of the magazine's annual "Creativity" issue. The print magazine contains creative assignments that readers can complete on the iPad and submit to the magazine's editors through the app itself. This is the kind of thinking that benefits both operations — print and digital — without sapping the strength of either.

One of the projects we're working on at Joe Zeff Design involves another type of reinvention. We've been approached by a large publishing company to create a sample app from its marquee print product. Our mandate: Show what's possible.

It would be easy enough to rearrange its parts to fit a 768x1024 screen, and then rearrange them further to fit a 1024x768 screen. But that's not what we're doing. We're dissecting their best-selling book like a forensic examiner, tearing apart every page and creating an inventory of its content. Then we're rebuilding the book from scratch to make best use of the iPad interface. What we're finding — and what we'll share with our client during a two-day workshop — is that what worked well in print isn't necessarily the best approach for a multimedia app. We've replaced paragraphs of text with dynamic layers of information that allow the reader to interact with the content. We've gone so far as to commission entirely new content to bring to life the words and pictures from the print edition.

We've created something new instead of redesigning something old. Our prototype takes advantage of the iPad's internet connectivity, in-app purchasing, sharing capabilities and multimedia players, all powered by WoodWing's Digital Magazine Tools. The target: more than 8 million current iPad owners worldwide — a number expected to swell to nearly 30 million by 2013.

To reach new audiences, we must create new products. Over the next few years more tablets will find their way into the classroom, already filled with iTunes account holders thanks to the popularity of the iPod and iPhone. Their likelihood to embrace digital books and magazines will increase as they become accustomed to reading schoolbooks this way. Every publisher should be focused on this audience, with products specifically created to appeal to youth. Not only do they represent the future, but their buying power can be tapped immediately.

If not new products, then new business models. Instead of forcing the consumer to purchase and download an entire book or magazine, let them pick and choose which articles and sections they want to buy. Think of it as a la carte publishing. Your audience is used to picking individual songs instead of buying the whole album. Why should their publications be different? It may turn out that the parts are worth much, much more than the whole.

New habits must be forged, and old habits must be broken. Not only consumers’ habits, but publishers’ as well.

It is not enough to redesign. It is imperative that we reinvent.

Now let’s make some hotcakes.

Out of this world! Solar System for iPad

We're excited to announce that "Solar System for iPad," a breakthrough electronic book published by Touch Press and Faber and Faber in association with Planetary Visions and Joe Zeff Design, is now available in the iTunes App Store. Touch Press is best known for its debut offering, "The Elements," one of the most successful eBooks in the App Store with more than 160,000 copies downloaded at $13.99 apiece. We've been collaborating with Touch Press since June on the design of "Solar System," working closely with CEO Max Whitby, Creative Director Theodore Gray and Producer Richard Turnnidge.

"It has been a real pleasure working with Joe Zeff Design, who bring years of experience in delivering the highest quality illustrations and information graphics to the iPad," said Whitby. "They are consummate professionals. We look forward to publishing further ground-breaking titles with their help."

Joe Zeff Design collaborated with Touch Press on the design of the eBook, including the application icon, splash screen, the Elements-inspired home page, layout templates and navigation. Further, we created several key illustrations and interactive animations, including cutaways of each planet rendered in LightWave 3D that allow the viewer to peel open each planet to see what’s inside.

More screen captures and sample animations are available for viewing here, or by purchasing the eBook from the App Store here, just in time for Christmas!

"Solar System for iPad" is written by best-selling author Marcus Chown, and opens with a specially composed Björk song to begin the intergalactic adventure. Inside are more than 150 beautifully presented story pages with interactive scenes, videos and 3D objects. Each section includes up-to-the-second astromomical information from Wolfram I Alpha, as well as image galleries that bring the wonders of space to the iPad screen. More details here.

Adds Gray, creator of "The Elements:" "What sets Solar System for iPad apart more than anything is that it is not just an app or reference guide or tour, it’s a real honest-to-goodness book you can sit down and read."

Many thanks to Max, Theo, Richard and the entire team at Touch Press. Looking forward to more exciting projects together.

TIME Person of the Year

TIME magazine announced its Person of the Year this morning: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Wrote Managing Editor Rick Stengel: “For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them (something that has never been done before); for creating a new system of exchanging information that has become both indispensable and sometimes a little scary; and finally, for changing how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even optimistic, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year.”

Read more here.

Here’s the image we created for the magazine — a mosaic based on a few thousand images that TIME readers submitted to Facebook earlier this year for a cover story that we also illustrated, and a photograph provided by TIME by Tony Avelar/Bloomberg/Getty Images:

And here’s the image we created earlier this year for another cover.

Thanks to Rick, Design Director D.W. Pine and everyone at TIME.

See our gallery of mosaic images here.

iOS 4.2.1 Update

What's the point of having the latest gadget without the latest software? Be sure to update your iPad to the current software in order to enjoy the latest Apple upgrades, such as multitasking, folders, AirPrint, Find My iPad — and our hot-off-the-Pad app: Splashlight studio tour! How to check your software version 1. On your iPad, tap Settings, then General. 2. On the right side, note the version. It should be 4.2.1. 3. If not, you're cheating yourself out of a lot of great features.

Updating to iOS 4.2.1 automatically via iTunes 1. Download iTunes 10.1 from here. 2. Connect your iPad to the computer. 3. iTunes shows an iOS 4.2.1 update message. 4. Click the “Download and Update” button to update iPad to iOS 4.2.1.

More info http://www.apple.com/ios/ http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1060

Note that Apple won't let you download apps larger than 20 megabytes over 3G. You need a WiFi connection or an iTunes download that you sync that big ol' app to your iPad.

Our First App: Splashlight studio tour

We're pleased to announce that our very first iPad app has landed at the App Store. Splashlight studio tour offers a multimedia-rich excursion into some of the most exclusive photo studios in New York and Miami, complete with behind-the-scenes video, slideshows, panoramic views of each studio, blueprints and dimensions, and an online form to begin the booking process. Best of all, it's free. Check it out at here.

The app was built using WoodWing's Digital Magazine Tools, the same framework used by Time Inc. and other publications to develop their iPad editions. Joe Zeff Design is a Silver Authorized Solution Partner of WoodWing — one of only two in the New York City area — and thanks WoodWing for its support in producing the app, which we expect to be the first of many. Further, we look forward to working with WoodWing clients throughout the world on their iPad and Android publications.

The app took less than a week to create, leveraging assets that Splashlight had already collected for its new website. We were already aware of Splashlight's capabilities, having spent 15 months in their Soho studios as their in-house creative team. WoodWing provides an Adobe InDesign-based workflow, which allowed us to focus less on programming and more on design and interaction. We created both vertical and horizontal orientations, and included a help screen. The app was submitted to Apple on Nov. 30 and approved two weeks later.

We're learning volumes. On its first day, with no promotion whatsoever, the app was downloaded 168 times. Here's the breakdown of where:

(Dec. 14 update: After three days we have 613 downloads, and we're ranked No. 30 in the "Top Photography Free iPad Apps" category on iTunes.)

Maybe it's the supermodel on the home page of the Splashlight app that's generating all of the attention. In any event, here are a few screen captures. There are more images in our iPad gallery here.

When is an App not an App?

We’re currently designing and developing apps for the iPhone and iPad, and in doing so we’ve become much more attentive to what makes an app an app. It seems to be a point of confusion, judging by the number of clients who ask us to build them an app without fully knowing what an app even is.

There are mobile apps, intended for iPhones and Android devices.

There are tablet apps, intended for iPads and Android tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab and upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook.

And there are websites, which can be accessed on mobile and tablet devices — as well as personal computers and even some televisions.

Apps are created by developers, who tend to be computer programmers. Because the programming languages are so similar, mobile developers are becoming tablet developers. But the reality is that mobile and tablet development are very different.

Mobile apps are created for tiny screens that are always connected to the internet. That means the content can be placed on a server anywhere in the world and reliably accessed through wireless networks.

Tablet apps are created for larger screens that are not always connected to the internet, particularly those devices that rely on WiFi connections. That means the content may not always be accessible, and in order to guarantee a fulfilling experience it is necessary to include some if not all of the content inside the application, which results in larger file sizes. It is a media-rich experience that lends itself to a more sophisticated design aesthetic than a mobile app.

So why build an app when you could more easily build a website that works on more screens?

There are plenty of reasons.

• Because you want to sell it. • Because you want to make content accessible on a small screen, in the case of mobile apps. • Because you want to leverage device capabilities: a camera, accelerometer, compass, GPS, iTunes library, in-app purchasing. • Because you want to deliver content with reliability and immediacy, regardless of whether there is an internet connection. • Because you want to create a unique experience that is designed for maximum impact on a particular device.

Otherwise, it makes sense to build a website.

Not an app.

Apps typically do things. It is helpful to try to define an app’s purpose in a sentence, as in “this app helps people find used cars” or “this app helps people maintain shopping lists” or “this app turns photos into cartoons.”

Apple has specific requirements for apps. Otherwise the company will not approve them for inclusion in its App Store. In particular, according to the App Store Review Guidelines on Apple’s Developer site:

• 2.12  Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected • 2.13 Apps that are primarily marketing materials or advertisements will be rejected • 12.3 Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links, may be rejected

Books and magazines are viewed differently than apps. Their purpose is to entertain or inform, or both. They come to life on tablets, in particular, with the inclusion of multimedia — music, video, slideshows.

This has become our sweet spot, creating multimedia experiences that present content more dynamically than traditional and online alternatives. We’re working on several projects that we hope to share in the months ahead. Meanwhile, we continue to do our best to educate our clients as to what makes an app an app.

And not an app.

Give My Regards to Broadway . . .

It's our Broadway debut, produced for SpotCo to promote Whoopi Goldberg's upcoming musical comedy. We created computer-generated typography using LightWave, rendering a vertical and horizontal version. Here's how the vertical appeared in a full-page ad in The New York Times . . .

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. . . and the horizontal version on the web at sisteractthemusical.com:

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Shoutouts to Chris O'Riley for modeling the type and Ed Gabel for his masterful Photoshop work. And thanks to Gail, Jeff and Melissa at SpotCo — now if we can just score some tickets . . . Hint, hint!

Making of the Brand

The following post was published on Oct. 19, 2010. An up-to-date gallery showing our work with PepsiCo can be accessed here. It's Employment Branding week at Joe Zeff Design!

We just wrapped up two days of planning meetings with PepsiCo's global Talent Acquisition team to map out the next steps in the evolution of our new Possibilities brand, and RecruitFest! 2010 rolled out video footage from its wildly successful event earlier this month in Boston. Among the highlights: PepsiCo's Chris Hoyt was interviewed about "Going Glocal" — how PepsiCo's new employment brand offers the extensibility to be both global and local at the same time. Many thanks to Chris for singling out Joe Zeff Design for its role.

Watch the entire hour here or skip ahead to our props at 3:51 of this segment.

Part of the PepsiCo strategy includes a series of video documentaries about employees who exemplify the Possibilities brand. The videos were produced by our partners at Houseblend Media, whose past clients include Good magazine, Starbucks and MTV. Their PepsiCo work, however, is their best yet. The videos have been online for a few weeks now and just today went up on YouTube. See for yourself . . .

Paper to Pixels: Venturing into the Unknown

I received an e-mail today from a photo editor who attended "Paper to Pixels v2," a panel discussion on tablet apps presented last week by the Society of Publication Designers. l was among five designers who addressed a packed house on the promise and perils of publishing to the iPad and other tablets. The photo editor sought advice: how to realign his career to best position himself for the opportunities ahead. My response, as it may benefit others who are considering similar questions: ***

Thanks for your note, and your kind words about my presentation. You are wise to begin researching ways to break into the new world of multimedia tablets, as they represent the future of our industry. It’s still extremely early in the development cycle, and it will likely be another year or two before tablets become commonplace. By then the players will be firmly entrenched, and the winners and losers will be apparent to all.

Knowledge is power, and the best source for that knowledge is a combination of internet-reported news and firsthand experience. There are numerous blogs that do a great job covering this emerging marketplace — in particular, follow Poynter’s Mobile Media site. I try to check it daily. Further, keep a close eye on Gizmodo, Phil Elmer-DeWitt’s Apple 2.0 blog, as well as a generalized Google news search for keyword “iPad.” The NYT and WSJ, as you might expect, offer the best mainstream reporting, particularly online through the NYT Bits blog by Nick Bilton and the WSJ’s All Things Digital with Walt Mossberg.

Regarding firsthand experience, incorporate the iPad into your daily routines and carefully dissect the apps that you find yourself returning to. Consider what makes them compelling, how they incorporate multitouch and accelerometer functionality, whether the content is published or user-generated, and how they generate revenue. As a photographer, pay close attention to The Guardian Eyewitness, Getty Images app and the New York Post Pix app. The Elements is another winner, and a proven example of how photography can drive valuable content on the iPad. It’s important to stay abreast of the fast-changing environment. Samsung and BlackBerry have competitive products in the works that will force publishers to confront the decision whether to develop for other platforms. Understand the differences between ePub format, SDK-dependent apps and fully customized apps — and know the benefits and limitations of each.

Software? It depends on whether you intend to write your own apps or come up with ideas that others can develop. As a photographer, it would make sense to get your hands on a Canon 7D or the more affordable 60D and familiarize yourself with the nuances of digital video, as the demand for it will increase as multimedia tablets multiply. The RED camera is also worth knowing about, although the steady decline of print makes its high-resolution capability less relevant. Video editing is an increasingly valued skill in the tablet era, along with a working knowledge of codecs, formats and technical details.

How to get your foot in the door, you ask? Understand that very few individuals — and very few companies — have meaningful tablet experience at this point, which levels the playing field considerably. When hiring, I consider raw potential, curiosity, flexibility and work ethic. But everyone’s different.

Best of luck. Joe

Fortune launched its iPad edition last week and we were excited to be a part of it, creating the magazine's app icon as well as its first cover — and an animated cover at that. Many thanks to Creative Director John Korpics, a longtime friend and client, for including us.

The icon.

John, an icon himself, asked us to create an icon that would stand apart from the crowd. He specifically wanted to shed the Armor All sheen that you see on most icons, a layer of lacquer automatically applied by Apple. We figured out how to turn it off -- thanks Google! -- and started doodling in Adobe Illustrator to present John with some general compositions:

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The best way to go, it seemed, was the solitary F. John agreed, and we proceeded to F up his magazine, creating about two dozen renderings in LightWave, the most promising of which are shown below:

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The winner? A combination platter, mixing the grid with the blue button and adding a fever line. It debuted as Fortune's Twitter icon a few weeks back, and now appears as the magazine's app icon, splash screen and atop the iPad masthead:

The cover.

A few weeks later, John called for a cover illustration for what happened to be Fortune's first iPad issue. The subject: Google, and it's potential vulnerability as search becomes more commonplace and new competitors emerge. It would be our second Google cover for Fortune — the first had President Obama peering through Google-inspired glasses last November. Once again ... thanks Google!

We executed three concepts: cracked Google, discarded Google and the winner, Google turned to goo.

Here's how it appears in print:

We've been jonesing to do an animated iPad cover ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the device earlier this year, and finally we had our chance. We've done several covers for Time since its iPad edition launched, but the WoodWing software hadn't yet matured to the point where cover animation would be feasible. We reworked our LightWave render to add motion, which took about a day and a half. 

See the animated cover.

Looking forward to the next one. And the next one. Its exciting to consider the many ways to add interest, information and impact to covers and spreads, leveraging the magic canvas we've been provided by Apple. Thanks again to John, Fortune, Time Inc.'s technology team, and WoodWing.

Summer fun

Apologies for the sporadic blogging — it's been a busy summer, between major projects for PepsiCo, an eBook project for the iPad, and 95-degree motorcycle rides. We're working on several magazine covers at present, and just finished this one for Entertainment Weekly:

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Many thanks — again — to Amid Capeci at EW!

Helping Will Ferrell Get Some Tail

It's all in a day's work, and not as lascivious at it sounds. We put a computer-generated tail on Ferrell for the cover of Entertainment Weekly's Best of Summer Issue, which comes out today. In his virtual mermaid costume — actually, it's a merman costume — Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg strike a pose to draw attention to their upcoming action-comedy, "The Other Guys."

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Many thanks to Design Director Amid Capeci and Managing Editor Jess Cagle for a terrific assignment. A glimpse behind the scenes:

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Mac Daddy

We're excited about the new Macworld cover, our tenth for art director Rob Schultz:

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Many thanks to Rob and the editors of Macworld, one of our favorite magazines. Here are the others we've done over the past five years — everything you see here is computer-generated:

Third TIME's the Charm

Next week's TIME cover, our third this year.

Computer-generated, as usual. Here's a closeup:

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Another fun image we produced for TIME:

Oink!

The Economics of the iPad

An annotated version of a presentation delivered June 15, 2010 at the Power of the Tablet conference at the Poynter Institute of Media Studies. The conference attracted attendees from as far away as Dubai and Germany to learn about tablet publishing from Dr. Mario Garcia, The New York Times, Time magazine, USA Today, News Corp., Adobe, WoodWing and, well, me. Here's what they saw and heard:

***

Introduction

It's still too early to know what will and won't make money on the iPad, but I'm here today to present one point of view, and recommendations based on my experiences since Apple announced its tablet in January. It's been a busy five months — blogging. consulting, strategizing, creating content and pursuing investment opportunities surrounding the iPad. It was bound to happen, considering the types of work we do at Joe Zeff Design:

We produce magazine covers . . .

. . . as well as advertising imagery, such as this computer-generated Porsche we produced at Joe Zeff Design at Splashlight . . .

. . . as well as information graphics like these, for Runners World and Rolling Stone . . .

. . . as well as animation, like this Nike running shoe (that spun onscreen but won't here):

For Joe Zeff Design, the iPad represents a place where our capabilities converge, and an opportunity to expand upon our existing relationships with newspapers, magazines, advertising agencies and corporations. But in order for us to make money, we needed to first understand how our clients were going to make money, so we could help them to make even more.

Everyone On The Same Page

The iPad forces all parties to come together as entrepreneurs. It is a joint venture between editorial, technology and business development, with a shared vision that is clearly focused on creating this:

Regardless of the quality of the effort, it is the business model that will ultimately determine success or failure. There must be sufficient value to drive revenues, and those revenues must exceed costs. A quick dissection of the variables that feed the business model:

Development costs vary depending on the level of customization. There are templated solutions like WoodWing's offering, and there are custom-built solutions that can be much more expensive to develop. Content can be repackaged or created from scratch; simliarly, production can be piggybacked onto existing workflows or independently pursued. Distribution is handled by Apple for a 30 percent premium, or through a browser for varying price points.

On the revenue side, it is important to note that advertising is but one of numerous potential streams. Inflows can also be realized through single-app sales, subscriptions, sponsorships and partnerships, commissions for helping to sell someone else's products and income from selling your own products.

Step 1: Choose your audience

The first of three steps toward developing a tablet publication with a reasonable expectation of profitablility is to define the audience for the product. What Apple has told us is that there is already a large and growing customer base.

Unfortunately, we have no idea who these people are.

There are no solid analytics at this point, and Apple is making it difficult for third parties to collect information about the iPad user base. It is in Apple's interest to keep that data to itself, as it has developed its own advertising platform, the iAd network. Meanwhile, publishers are forced to rely on anecdotal research to identify what demographics they're attempting to reach. One unscientific method: go to the local Apple Store and see who's clustered around the iPads.

But it's risky not to jump in this early.

As a publisher, you'll have to weigh the risks. You can leverage what you know about your print audience and the type of content you're able to deliver. Here are three possible approaches for delivering value to your potential customers:

Many publications are simply turning their print editions into pixels. In some cases, those newspapers and magazines are exported as PDFs and distributed through companies like Zinio, PixelMags and NewspaperDirect. Time and Wired have gone further, working with WoodWing and Adobe, respectively, to produce enhanced iPad versions with bonus content, interactivity and vertical and horizontal orientations. In its first issue, Wired sold nearly as many digital copies as traditional ones.

Another approach is to break up your publication and sell it in pieces. Instead of offering a $4.99 magazine, you might sell it a la carte — by the article, subject or even by the author — at a reduced price point. Many publications are offering free samples — Entertainment Weekly's Must List, New York Post Pix, and NYT Editor's Choice — to whet appetites for forthcoming paid apps. For newspapers, the real estate section would make a natural standalone app, easy for prospective buyers to carry along when house shopping. The iPad 3G's built-in GPS would help buyers identify nearby properties for sale, and provide a way to see inside a house without ever getting out of the car. Searchable fields by price, number of bedrooms, and days on market would add value, and make the app an attractive vehicle for advertising.

The Guardian Eyewitness leverages the crisp display of the iPad by publishing one incredible photograph every day. It is as simple as it gets, and one of the most popular apps available. (149,000 downloads, reports speaker Staci D. Kramer of paidContent). The Elements: A Visual Exploration brings the periodic table to life by presenting 360-degree imagery of rocks, metals and other objects. At $13.99, it is the highest grossing eBook in the App Store and an inspiration for any publication seeking to develop experiential content. Worth considering: a children's version of your publication, specifically for the iPad, to establish what may be a lifelong relationship with your future subscribers.

But don't stop there.

Step 3: Consider partnerships

Partnerships are a way to reduce risk while expanding the potential for success. Among the benefits:

Money: Consumers don't want to pay for content, but advertisers routinely pay for audience.

Reach: Your audience plus their audience equals a larger customer base.

Relevance: Expanded opportunities to become part of consumers' routines

Many thanks to the Poynter Institute of Media Studies and Dr. Mario Garcia of Garcia Media for organizing this important conference, likely the first of many. More transcripts from other speakers here.

One Slick Cover

Our Newsweek cover oozes with computer-generated imagery, which made possible a one-day turnaround with no messy cleanup! Many thanks to Bonnie and Michelle — and Jon, of course — for the cover assignment, our first for Newsweek since Stephen Colbert a year ago, and hopefully not our last . . .

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View fullsize

Interesting to note that Newsweek's cover no longer appears on the front page of its newly redesigned website. The screen capture above came from Newsweek's new iPad app. As magazines transition to digital, it's worth considering the significance of the cover. By abandoning it, a publication fails to capitalize on its most valuable branding element, the one with which readers are most familiar. Moreover, it signals a new issue with new content, and telegraphs the magazine's unique point of view. On the newsstand it lassoes the consumer through surprise, curiosity, emotion, sophistication, beauty and habit, and on the screen it does no less. Whether in pixels or on paper, the cover still matters.

Our last Newsweek cover, working with the fabulous Nigel Parry.

Little Pictures, Big Stories

We've been experimenting with software that turns thousands of photographs into one large mosaic, with exceptional results. We've added some of our own R&D that has resulted in two really great magazine covers, one for Time and another for TV Guide. In both cases, the mosaics had lifespans beyond the print magazines — we created a downloadable poster for TV Guide and Time published a supersized mosaic in its iPad edition.

Our Time cover:

Our TV Guide poster:

And another image we did as a test: