I’m all for reading printed matter, magazines, books and newspapers on portable devices, I’m just not sure if the old ways of flipping pages or a direct translation of the printed matter into digital form really cuts it. So the one thing that I really want is that if I’m buying a digital copy of a magazine, it has to be more that a direct translation of the printed version, it has to feel more immersive than reading a website version of an article.

There’s going to be a new skill set for designers to fill, that of creating/translating print content over to digital and for software companies to create the tools that let the designers do this without having to learn a programming language.

The Wired Table and Mag+ concept are two of the most promising digital magazines so far. Woodwing’s Content Station looks okay, but feels very clunky and cheesy, like early WYSIWYG html editors for making web pages. I’m not sure if these Sports Illustrated – Time Inc Tablet demos where created using Content Station.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Design, Technology, WWW.