Content plus experience is now king

Publishers around the world are striving to embrace the digital age — to build distinctive brands, develop sustainable business strategies, and achieve greater profitability. They're looking for innovative, cost-effective ways to design and deliver content to fragmented audiences on an ever-expanding array of smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and other devices.

Audiences today want to engage with content wherever they are, using their preferred devices. And they seek immersion in compelling, media-rich experiences that are optimally designed and delivered. Content plus experience is now king.

Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) has chosen to release Australia's biggest selling technology magazine, Australian Personal Computer (APC) with an iPad edition, viewed via a branded iPad reader application.

Adobe InDesign creates the digital content, then using the InDesign plugin created by Adobe SI partner Woodwing, the magazine's designers use familiar tools to create interactive publications. Frames can be marked as slideshows, videos, hotspots, or even as Web elements that will show live content when the iPad is connected to the Internet. The plugins communicate with the WoodWing Enterprise system to allow the placement of text, graphics, and multimedia content.

Digital publishing goes global

Further afield, The New Yorker, the iconic magazine title from publisher Condé Nast, confirmed at the end of June that it will use the Digital Magazine Solution from Adobe to create an engaging magazine experience for tablet devices like the iPad. This comes as Chuck Townsend, CEO of Condé Nast, notes that the WIRED Reader, created with the same Adobe solution in May this year, has surpassed 90,000 downloads - all in a period of roughly a month.

In a New York Times article Townsend indicates that the WIRED Reader has "surpassed our newsstands sales...but interestingly, has not cannibalized them either."

Conde Nast joins other publishing icons including The New York Times, which last year picked the Adobe AIR framework to build version two of its downloadable Times Reader.

According to reviewer Ryan Singel, the new version takes advantage of Adobe's expertise in print layout to dynamically re-size images and flow text depending on the size of your screen or how wide or tall you set the Reader window. His full article is highly complimentary about the AIR intuitive interface and puts forwards ideas on the future of online news reading: "it isn't in the browser — though that won't disappear either. But no browser can rival AIR's grace at laying out text, resizing images and handling multimedia elements or crosswords."

Couple all this activity with the new guidelines from the Audit Bureau of Circulations regarding what counts towards 'paid and verified' magazine circulation - including how to account for digital magazines - and the digital publishing landscape looms fast and lucrative.

Learn how to build apps like the WIRED Reader via Adobe Labs

Later this year Adobe will release the publishing technology used to build the WIRED Reader. Available via Adobe Labs, designers and publishers must have upgraded or purchased Adobe InDesign CS5 or a suite edition that includes InDesign CS5 to use it.

"Investing in InDesign CS5 and Creative Suite 5 today positions publishers to execute on a digital publishing strategy and take advantage of future publishing workflows. Immediately, InDesign CS5 enables you or your design and production staff to leverage the new interactive feature set to create rich documents such as magazines, corporate collateral, and catalogs that include interactivity, animation, sound and FLV video — without having to write code," says Adobe product manager Michael Stoddart.

For example, Design studio Belle & Wissell, Co. used InDesign to create an interactive publication celebrating 14 years of Born Magazine.

"InDesign users can look at this great, interactive magazine created completely using InDesign and also download the InDesign files themselves to get a fast insight into this next way of publishing," said Stoddart.

Adobe's revolution of traditional print publishing combined with its visionary integrated technologies for cross-platform production, make it the popular choice for publishers.

"We know where publishing is coming from because Adobe has been there from the start, from the development of PostScript, to the launch of InDesign, and now through to the future with the Adobe open, comprehensive Digital Publishing Platform," said Stoddart.

The Digital Publishing Platform is built on the foundation of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and Omniture technologies. It consists of applications, technologies, and services that allow publishers to cost effectively author, produce, and distribute content to the broadest possible audience on a wide variety of digital devices. With this platform, Adobe is helping publishers and advertisers revolutionise how they create and deliver digital content, and how their audiences consume it.

"It allows traditional and corporate publishers to differentiate and gain competitive advantage by delivering digital content as part of a richly designed, visually immersive experience that is accessible online and offline. Importantly, it helps achieve this cost-effectively, by allowing publishers to use existing staff, skill sets, and familiar Adobe InDesign and Creative Suite publishing tools.

"Down the road, we'll also be integrating analytics from Omniture into our digital magazine solution in order to give publishers increased visibility into how their content is consumed and enable enhanced content and advertising optimisation capabilities," says Stoddart.

The analytics connection is key. Along with immersive content, developments like the WIRED Reader begin to pave the way for increased engagement with brand advertisements.

"The advertisements in the WIRED Reader encouraged readers to interact with each brand, including a slideshow recap of HBO's True Blood, a 360º rotating CT scanner from GE, and HD video from Intel, Infiniti, Nissan, Mercedes Benz, and Pepsi, among others. Integrated with the content, these ads keep readers within the magazine experience. With this new digital magazine medium, publishers can expand their ad inventory offerings, offer advertisers exciting new advertising possibilities and establish value for immersive digital ads," said Stoddart.