4.18.2011

thoughts on designing for the ipad

with the movement of print into the hand-held computing arena, one of the first things that struck me was (oddly enough) the possibility for advertising. devices such as the ipad bridge the gap between print ads and the marketplace, allowing the user to directly link to online stores through the ad. this creates a valuable asset to the advertiser, which then provides the fledgling online magazine market a steady base of income in a digital "free-is-expected" world.

the exciting part about the ipad is that it allows the traditional print format to remain relatively intact. that's why when watching an ad for esquire's new ipad ap, i was a little disappointed that so much of the navigation relies on the old scrolling web windows. one of the nice things about print is having the sum of the information on a page presented as a whole (in my opinion). rather than a digital magazine, these scrolling windows make the format just feel like a new web page.

when time magazine released their ipad ap, the first thing i noticed was the impact of seeing video of major news events, but presented in a well photographed, high quality fashion. in the web world, so much video and imagery is presented at baseline quality in a often much too small format. i'm excited to see the digital world handed to the minds who have traditionally given us top-shelf design standards and culturally iconic photographs.

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