ipad – Project Magazine

I’ve been dubious about ipads…. I guess I’ve been biding my time and waiting to see if there was something big that it could offer professional photographers…. Something new that I hadn’t seen before.

And today, I found it!

I saw a magazine app by Virgin called Project. Here is a link to more info on it, but viewing it anywhere other than on an ipad really doesn’t do it justice.

What I found seriously amazing about it, was the way that it integrated video and sound into the articles. Yeah, I know that’s the most obvious and predictable step for online mags. But imagine an article on the actor Jeff Bridges where instead of a text intro + photo, there’s a 10 sec video of Jeff standing there grinning at the camera walking round the beach. Or a video animation showing you the of the streets of Tokyo as the intro to a travel story on Japan.

The quality of the design and the photography was just lovely…. It also made me realise how important it is for photographers to get into producing videos to stay competitive in the future if their work is going to cross platforms in this way. It also started me thinking about the usability of low res images. In the past a low res 72 dpi image was only good enough to be used as a proof or for web content. However, if magazines are now to be sold as apps (Project is only available as an app for ipads) then they might never actually need high res copies of files. The camera with the highest megapixel count isn’t necessarily the one that produces the best image. Maybe this will start to make people realise that.

Do yourself a favour and have a look at this app, it really did blow my mind….