Working efficiently with app magazines

A myth must be cleared up

“Creating an app magazine is easy and effortless.”

This statement is definitely wrong. If you want to create a professional app magazine with which you can actively earn money through advertising, you need to make human, time, and financial resources available. Human resources, because the advertising sales department first needs to understand app ads in order to actively sell them to potential advertisers. Time resources, because the editorial team needs to provide additional material that isn't used in the printed magazine (videos, for example). Financial resources, because you need a digital publishing expert to put all of this into practice for you. Of course, you can also handle digital publishing in-house, but experience has shown that the additional personnel and time expenditure should not be underestimated.

HCG corporate designs' approach: The client sends all raw data (text as Word or text files, images, video files, etc.). The entire app magazine is then created based on the editorial plan and uploaded to the App Store. The client thus outsources the entire digital media design process to HCG corporate designs, saving personnel and time.

Internal publishing processes

The editorial team

The fundamental difference between print and digital is the number of options. While you can read text and look at images in a paper magazine, digital formats (like tablets) offer a wide range of animations, elements with which the reader can actively interact (such as buttons), sounds, videos, static and moving images, etc. So while the traditional print editorial team is "only" busy with creating the content, in the tablet sector they also have to grapple with the question of how the created content can be presented in the most attractive way for the reader. How about, for example, an infographic, animations and sounds? Or a video? Or a scratch card effect on the tablet? The editorial team has to ask themselves the same question for every story: How do I maximize the user experience without taking the focus away from the topic? It is important that the editorial team has a basic understanding of app magazine production. It is also important to note that screens - including tablet screens - are backlit and therefore tire the human eye more quickly than paper pages. Hence: Less text, more multimedia is the motto.

Marketing and advertising sales

As the number of apps in app stores grows rapidly, the question of how to market your own app is becoming increasingly important. This is where the marketing department needs to demonstrate its capabilities. But the first and easiest step, of course, is to promote your app on your website and, above all, in your print magazine. There, your target audience is right in front of you. For example, you could include banners in your magazine, such as "See the entire interactive photo gallery in our app."

In addition to the arguments for advertising in an app magazine, it is also important for advertising sales to know which formats need to be worked with:

• 1 full page print is not the same as 1 full page app.

• An iPad screen has dimensions of 2048 x 1536 pixels with a resolution of 300 dpi for Retina displays. This must be taken into account when delivering ads.

• In addition to static displays, there are numerous interactive options: integration of audio, video, photo slideshows, pull-out tabs, reveal effects, scratch-off effects (= “scratch card effect”), to name just a few examples.

• Flash is not supported.

• If videos are to be embedded in the app (saves annoying waiting/streaming time), the video files must be delivered in the highest possible quality (HD). File size plays a minor role here, as video files can be "encoded" (drastically reducing the file size while maintaining HD quality).