The Future of MarCom: A Look at Wired Magazine’s iPad Edition

Recently, the digital edition of Wired Magazine became a top-selling iPad app, with over 24,000 copies sold within the first 24 hours of its debut. Interestingly, Apple recently announced that it sold 2 million iPads in less than 2 months!

As a web designer and illustrator with roots in print design, Wired’s success caught my attention, and I decided to give the iPad edition a try.

In spite of the criticism (“too expensive”, “too many ads”, “no bookmarking”, “no cut-and-paste”, etc.), I found the experience to be very enjoyable overall— but perhaps ironically, not as much for the content, as for the way the content was presented and how well it worked with my iPad.

After a few minutes of exploration, navigating the magazine, although unconventional, became intuitive (unlike the Popular Science app). I enjoyed the ability to sample video clips and music while reading a page (without having to jump out of the app and into Safari, unless I wanted to learn more). And, the interactive graphics, combined with the ability to “hold” the publication in my hands (via the iPad), made the experience feel more like “print” and more like “interactive multimedia”— all at the same time.

From the interaction to the animation, everything just felt “right”. The interactivity is appropriately restrained— just click a button and an image gently fades in/out, or the audio plays— without cheesy sound effects or hyper-animated objects. And all of the ads (at least for now) are all full-size pages— they do not distract readers while reading an article. Many of the ads are also interactive, which made the overall experience even more engaging.

So, what does this have to do with marketing communications? Well, most significantly, the iPad has the potential to be the perfect medium for interactive publications— including annual reports, brochures, and advertising. It gives designers the ability to go beyond simple pdf files and allows viewers to participate in a more engaging experience (without having to use the “skip intro” button).

Note: This morning, Adobe announced that it is planning to release a version of the software that was used to create Wired Magazine. However, this still doesn’t address Apple’s policy for reviewing apps (i.e., there is no guarantee that your “app” or “annual report” will make it into the app store). There are other, less attractive options however for publishing documents to the iPad.

Tommy Oddo is a web designer and digital artist who lives in Austin, Texas. Entrepreneurs, marketers, and in-house teams hire him to make their websites and digital products more engaging and easier to use. Follow him on: Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, and Facebook. Subscribe to future articles via RSS and/or Email.