Motion in Your Magazine, How will it Affect Content Quality?
March 19, 2010
The changes to digital content are coming very quickly with the advent of the iPad. It hasn’t even been released yet and already major magazines are revealing digital issues that capitalize on the platform’s abilities in exciting ways, including the ability to use motion graphics. But was does it mean for content quality if budgets are already dangerously thin today?
Last week I wrote a post about how excited I am that the iPad is going to make magazines ultra engaging. This week, we see an an example of one of the ways that that might work with this VIV Mag Motion Cover demo that was uploaded to Vimeo yesterday:
It’s very exciting, to be sure. For some time, it’s been obvious that the line between television and magazines was likely to disappear altogether, and here’s the evidence.
Alexx Henry explains the process of how it was done:
But as I look deeper into the realities of the magazine publishing world today, I’m seeing what seem like some pretty deep problems present themselves for magazine publishers, especially those who still have one foot in both digital and print media.
The product looks good, but the production of it looks expensive. Really, really expensive.
If magazine publishers running the spectrum from Condé Nast to a local rag are all having difficulties cutting the monetary pie in an effort to remain solvent—note I didn’t use the word profitable—the question is whether the iPad is going to make it even harder to produce good content.
While there are those magazines that are into the glitz and glam game probably salivating over the possibilities afforded by the iPad like Vogue, there are others barely surviving wondering how they’ll get there while producing a print version and a digital version akin to VIV. Paying writers and photographers on dwindling ad revenues to produce excellent content is a struggle anyway, but for those who feel compelled to produce motion video for their magazines just because it’s possible just saw their budget take a swift kick in the yarbles.
Of course, if video actually becomes the content with text content playing a supporting role, then that changes things a little. But only a little. Will that content come at the expense of a deeper well of meaningful, rich content?
Further, Alexx Henry explicitly in the companion piece to the VIV demo that they aren’t putting in motion for motion’s sake. Well, of course they are, so ignore that, but when you consider what this all means to overall magazine reading/viewing experience, how the line between editorial content and advertising will inevitably become further blurred to the point of invisibility, then other questions arise about content, its purpose and its quality too.
And then there’s the issue of how magazines and their publishers will still be able to give their readers the ability to ‘clip’, tag or bookmark given the video medium, something which has always been of huge value with conventional print and digital magazines today. But that’s the subject for another post.
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