The Huge Development of Digital Technologies - Essay Example

Digital magazines

With the tremendous advancement and growth of technology in the 21st century, digital magazines have emerged as powerful technology driven tool for publishing industries over print. According to Silva (2011), a digital magazine can be defined as an interactive content which created from scratch to a digital platform which includes the Internet, mobile phones, private networks, iPad, or other devices that are compatible with digital content. Although the print press has been stable for decades, the present day increase in the use of technology has significantly affected some magazines titles by making them lose their revenue by decreasing their sales volumes and their readers’ interest with a significant percentage (Rauwers, Voorveld, & Neijens, 2016).

Technology offers new features in consumers’ devices to improve their experience seamlessly, and therefore, the adoption of online presence for publications through media channels such as websites, mobile phone apps, news subscription services, and social media must be made. According to the findings of a survey that was carried out in the year 2016 by The Association of Magazine Media (MPA), it was established that there was an increase in the number of online content consumers from 1.55 billion to 1.73 billion from 2014 to 2015 (Tozer, 2016). This report also highlights the trends of digital magazines as a form of digital writing and provides an example of arguably the most iconic fashion magazine “Vogue,” which is illustrated in two different online appearances, for instance, an app and channel in Snapchat. Besides, the report discusses both the benefits and drawbacks of the online formats of this magazine.

The entire publishing industry is shifting into the digital media; however, the shift has not taken place completely, and the era of print magazine will continue but not as before. One of the major advantages that have come a long with digital printing is the ability to produce digital magazines at a cheaper and a lower cost. Besides, digital magazine is readily accessible anywhere and anytime and easy to drive in the market. In this regard, users spend more of their time on the internet, especially, due to the ability to access digital content at a much-reduced cost and also due to the increase in the accessibility of free content digital content (Silva, 2011). As a result, it has become a major challenge for publishers of print magazines to persuade consumers to buy their print material.

The conversion of a print magazine into a PDF file format is not the specific meaning of post digital era. However, post digital era refers to the production of digital magazines that contain interactive multimedia contents such audio, graphics, video, and images (Eiamkanchanalai & Assarut, 2011). These contents are designed to be viewed on a screen in different devices platforms in a manner that attracts and captures the attention of consumers. The post-digital era also involves the inclusion of common features that readers can use to navigate their mobile devices while reading. For example, a drop-down menu, a photo slideshow, and a scroll button, which increase work flow, efficiency, and the experience of consumers (Eiamkanchanalai & Assarut, 2011). Digital magazine allows users to subscribe for membership, which makes it easy for them to engage with the content through sharing and commenting. Digital features such as share and download options enable users to download content for their private consumption or share content with other social media consumers. In addition to this, the comment areas allow the consumers of digital magazines to participate in content generation by writing their thoughts.

Unlike the print magazines, the focus in digital content is to design an experience rather than a physical object for consumers. In a study which set out to determine the principals of designing a digital magazine, it was established that the process of designing a digital format or content requires a rapid change of the processes and structures (Nylén & Lyytinen, 2014). This is due to the fast and constant emergence of new technological products with different formats, shapes, and screen sizes in the market. In this regard, content publishers have not settled on whether to create alternative distribution channels or use the existing digital platforms such as Facebook and Apple Store (Nylén & Lyytinen, 2014).

Consuming digital text on an iPad brings about a different experience from other hand held digital mobile devices. The difference in this experience is that it can be unsatisfactory for the reader, for instance, they can result in a difficulty in navigation due to the small size of navigation buttons or as a result of user unfriendliness due to the inclusion of too much design elements and texts without considering the available screen space in such small deceives.

The main challenge that is facing many publishers of digital magazines is how to move successfully from the traditional print into a fully digital design product that stands out from other well-known magazine titles. Vogue magazine is one of the most iconic fashion leaders in the publishing industry around the world. Recently, Vogue Magazine took a major step towards the full adoption of modern technology over other titles by creating an app version for the magazine and having a channel in the Snapchat application. The magazine publisher, Conde Nast, explains that the final decision to build the app came after they have long term monitoring of consumers behaviour towards technology, which revealed that modern day consumers read online content more frequently than before (Independent newspaper, 2010).

In this regard, apart from their loyal customers who are mostly women, Vogue Magazines has adopted a new strategy of producing content that targets audiences who are in in search for latest fashion trends and who consume digital content via their devices. The company has made this possible by introducing new features to enable consumers to buy issues one by one or to subscribe for monthly or annual access, and this is like carrying a bunch of magazines but electronically in one place. The subscription option is suitable for travellers and busy worker.

The new Vogue app look like the print magazine, for example, they have a similar cover page; however, in the page swiping digital format, some pages with long articles can be scrolled down for more details. The layout for one page is very similar to the others, for example, there is a full-screen picture with a headline, and sometimes there is a description below it one paragraph. They play with fonts, but generally, they try to keep it elegant, clean and simple black font and white background.

There is a library which works like the first page of a print magazine by showing the content to every topic in the magazine and the pages which the topics are located. However, for iPhone users, it is a bit inconvenient to keep scrolling down reading lots of paragraphs without the interactive buttons that can be used to move to the top pages in a faster manner. Despite this, some of the articles in digital magazines are broken down into short paragraphs and pictures are included in the middle to explain what the story or paragraph is about. In some instances, there are advertisement images that contain prices of particular brands, and the reader is forced to always scroll up and down repeatedly instead of making it short and concise or in one page to fit the size of the screen. According to Sumner and Miller (2012), digital magazine designers should focus on using visually and emotionally appealing techniques due to attract and capture the attention of readers.

The Vogue digital magazine delivers a well-designed content and highly professional images; however, they still miss the idea of maintaining a short and direct text for readers who use the small sized screens of digital mobile devices. The consumers of digital content lose interest quickly when they are subjected to long texts. In this regard, the content does not merge the idea of seamless experience where there are no sufficient interactive elements inside the app. The lack of interactive elements makes the digital magazine to look like a PDF version of the original magazine, where readers cannot share the content via social media or using a hyperlink for the advertisement of shopping items (Amed, 2010).

Despite the limitations highlighted above, Vogue Magazine has launched a discovery Snapchat channel as a part of the magazine in the popular social media application. Vogue magazine designed the Snapchat app to allow it clients to get real-time fashion and news stories (Biron, 2016). It is similar to the magazine app but customized to the feature of the Snapchat showing trending live stories on fashion and beauty and animated photography and texts. The strategy behind this app is to enable Vogue Magazine to reach more audiences. This is due to the fact that the number of people using the Snapchat app on a daily basis has hit over 100 million individuals.

The Vogue Magazine Snapchat has given an easy access to millions of its clients who are now able to watch news events, read articles and consume pieces of information while using it for personal activities unlike a magazine app or website that users to log in or log out from time to time. According to Luxury Daily Newspaper (2017), this channel is targeting both male and female audiences who are active users of Snapchat and are aged between 13-24 years. Users their life style required modern and socially shared.

In this regard, the successful designing of this type of channel entails the creation a dynamic content and a daily feed of stories using an algorithm for the younger people reading patterns as opposed to the print magazines that are more likely elegant and formal. The feed interface is reminiscent of a Snapchat Discover story, where users can swipe directly into the headlines, and swipe up if they want to read the full article although it still looks like the layout of the app magazine. Conversely, the channel delivers live and real time news in nonlinear pattern and includes sounds audio clips over images, video over text, or text over sounds (Potts, 2014).

In this new app, the headline page screen contains moving graphic elements, texts and videos of celebrities that capture users’ attention to let them swap down and continue reading. However, articles are a little bit shorter than other Vogue mediums due to the screen size of a mobile phone and user behaviour and preference of short and simple texts. Besides, the use of vivid colours, shapes, and large fonts captures and retain the attention of consumers. To enhance navigation, interactivity, and user friendliness of Vogue Magazine Snapchat, the app has hyperlinks in the advertisement page where users swap and shop directly from brand websites. Despite this, the Snapchat app lacks a content page or a button to go back and forth searching for current articles.