Response - Week 4

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This week, Mike Haney spoke to the Vox staff via Skype about a relatively new product, Mag+, that can be used to export designs from InDesign to the iPad. I don't have an iPad (read: $499 floating around), and I haven't extensively used any loaners to this point, so I'm not particularly well versed in what a magazine on the iPad should be able to do. That said, I was very impressed with the InDesign plug-in, and I look forward to learning how to create interactive designs with it. Based on what I took from his presentation, Mag+ essentially eliminates the need to know how to program an iPad app with pretty extensive functionality. That's not to say it cuts out the middle man entirely — I'm sure further customization is ideal for any publication — but it's certainly comforting to know that a designer is creating their issues, not a programmer. It seems like Mag+ democratizes iPad use and allows great design to flow directly from print to digital.

What Mr. Haney explained was that Mag+ functions in many of the same ways as print designing; you work from an InDesign template and determine which visual elements should compliment which parts of the text. The added freedom of interactivity, video and a fluid space is, of course, also an added challenge. But it's a challenge that I cannot wait to undertake. As the designer, this feels to me like it must have felt to directors in the late 20s/early 30s who used sound for the first time. It's an entirely new dimension of the reader experience that requires exponentially more planning and thought.

I'm very eager to start.