Refreshing magazines. →
Yesterday I wrote down a lot of thoughts on the iPad in general, and on newspaper and magazine content in particular (Part I, Part II, Part III).
Today, in front of my computer only since less than hour, I already stumbled across two publications I experienced as quite refreshing:
1. LOVE
LOVE is a twice-yearly compendium of inspiration - for designers, for artists, for anyone looking for visual ideas; for anyone who loves fashion and design so much that they want to climb inside the heads of their heroes. Fashion is part of a creative cross-cultural dialogue and, for this reason, LOVE opens its readers to the most exciting developments in music and art as well as fashion to reveal the shape of tomorrow's aesthetics in its purest form.
In addition to the twice-yearly print compendium, they're running a website. Since today's my first visit, I have no idea how often they update it, but it seems that new chunks of content are being added from time to time and independent from the print issues. This is sure about the "Incoming" column on the right, where photos (and movies?) are being added almost daily. We'll see what happens to the "Featured" column.
What I like about the website, although there's not really much to read or to look at (did I write "not much to look at"? I mean, there's bare naked supermodels as an animated GIF!) is how unpretentious it appears. It's just there – no drumrolls, no spectacle and it immediately makes me want to explore the content. I'm getting curious what's on the site, but it also creates interest for the print compendium.
It doesn't really work on the iPad, but with some tweaks to the UI and the code it could be a nice example for a web-based iPad magazine. So please verybody with an iPad, visit the site so they find a lot of them in their statistics and there's no way around optimizing for the multitouch device.
→ http://thelovemagazine.co.uk
2. McSweeney's for iPhone (and the iPad soon)
I haven't heard about McSweeney's before. It's not really a magazine by definition, it's a literary journal and "as a small publishing house, they're committed to finding new voices". This goes for authors and contributors, but obviously also for storytelling formats, since they released an iPhone app (and as I found out in the App Store, an iPad version is on the road).
As "a dominant force in mobile infotainment whatever", they're promising "Stories. Short films. Interviews. Comics. Readings. Bad advice" against "lonely moments". You can buy the app for €4.99, which includes a subscribtion to their content feed for half a year (it can be refreshed within the app). You get all future updates starting with your purchase, but no content that has been published before (an attitude I do appreciate). Content formats range from short movies to small books.
But what I found most exciting was the following part in their statement (make sure to read all the text on their website):
At the same time [besides still publishing printed matter – editor's note], we’re always looking for new ways to communicate with our readers. McSweeneys.net has been an important part of our operation from our very beginning, and this project is the next logical step. It’s fun to try things like this, and the iPhone format provides opportunities for working with different types of media, especially in small chunks and with fast delivery. We expect it to evolve in interesting and unpredictable ways, and hopefully you’ll follow along with us.
I'm really looking forward to follow along with them.
→ http://iphone.mcsweeneys.net
