Why do magazines look so bad on the new iPad?
Mashable’s Lauren Indvik writes about magazine apps looking bad on the new iPad. She mostly refers to publishers who wanted to retain print-like magazine design and therefore cunningly churned out rendered PNG or JPEG files for each page, rather than using native text. Now the new iPad has a resolution far greater than that of its predecessor, these magazines all look like blurry crap.
Indvik lists a bunch of examples, stating they all looked terrible, and noted that Vogue was the sole exception, because the company
was able to optimize for the iPad’s “retina display” ahead of time
She then worries about file-sizes, stating that magazine apps are already big enough, and so we could see titles ballooning to unworkable levels. The problem is in the methodology used to create the apps:
Magazine publishers who use Adobe’s software all begin with InDesign to develop layouts, [Zeke Koch, senior director of product management of Adobe’s digital publishing arm] explained. Those layouts can then be exported in three different kinds of formats: as images (.png or .jpg), PDF or HTML. Different kinds of files — images, for instance, or video and audio files — are embedded within those larger file types.
Since magazines began publishing on tablets, “virtually all” publishers have chosen to export their digital editions as PNG (.png) files, Koch said. “The primary reason they did that is because the fidelity is perfect. What you see on the desktop when you’re designing is exactly what you see on the iPad when you’re finished. Images are the fastest thing to load, and if you’re trying to create a quick, effortless browsing experience, images are the way to do that,” he explained.
One of the magazines I write for, Tap!, took a wildly different approach. Instead of designing its app by thinking like magazine designers, the team started with a blank canvas and designed an app (YouTube). It developed a publishing platform that works on the iPad (TechRadar), to create a digital magazine for the iPad. The net result is that Tap! looks great on the new iPad, largely because it’s using native text rather than rendering to flat images. It looks so good that a prominent UX designer I recently chatted with initially refused to believe me when I said the app had not yet been optimised for the new iPad.
The Tap! team isn’t blind to Apple’s new device. It is working to optimise those relatively few components that require optimising for the next issue, but because of the nature of the app itself, it will grow rather more subtly than its contemporaries. To my mind, this is a way forward: create something new and don’t root yourself in publishing’s past. This is why the following claim from Indvik’s article almost makes my brain explode:
What Vogue did — and what all other titles will have to do in the coming weeks — is begin exporting their digital editions as PDFs, said Koch.
Great. Bin any innovation in magazine apps in terms of navigation and new interfaces and return to literal virtual versions of magazines. And it doesn’t end there:
But what about file size? I pointed out to Koch that Vogue was nearly as large as Wired‘s first issue for the original iPad. Unfortunately, he said, magazine files will be larger for iPad 3 readers because the image and video files need to be delivered at a higher resolution.
There are ways around this. Tap! doesn’t hold videos locally, but pulls them down on demand. From a user experience standpoint, this does mean if you’re on a crappy connection you can’t watch the videos, but it also means that a few issues of the magazine don’t fill up your iPad. It’s about balance, which, to my mind, is what a lot of the future of publishing is about. Trying to cling on to the old ways of doing things will prove fatal to the industry.
Indvik does at least ask about an alternative in her piece, essentially treating mag apps as compiled websites:
But why not render in HTML? I asked Koch. Wouldn’t that make the files smaller, and give readers the added benefit of selectable text?
Koch claimed that publishing in HTML wouldn’t substantially reduce the file sizes. “In both cases, you have a bunch of words, and descriptions of where things should be, and multimedia. Those multimedia files are still the same size.”
I’d argue this is inaccurate. Native text is smaller than rendering text to flat images—even newbie web designers understand this. It’s also ignoring the accessibility drawbacks of rendering to flat images.
To be fair to Koch, he’s also talking about overall file sizes, because assets like video won’t drop in size, but I’ve already addressed this point. But he also makes an argument that is the crux of the matter, showcasing why so many publishers are working with systems that are not optimal for tablets:
He said the big disadvantage with HTML is that it’s “not very good at layout out things predictably and perfectly.” Rather, it’s optimal for helping people create content that will adapt to any size screen. [sic]
This pretty much sums things up: ‘predictably and perfectly’. Almost everything in digital magazine publishing reminds me of web design in the mid-1990s. Back then, I had to fight hard against people who would attempt to render entire web pages as images, because this would enable everything to be laid out precisely. Never mind the fact this screwed things up from an accessibility perspective, and also totally ignored the benefits of the new medium. But at least there was some excuse back then—browsers were basic and no-one had experience to draw on. The arguments were new. Today’s web standards, however, provide a ton of control from a typographical and layout standpoint, but things are just different to how they are in print. You define anchor points and containers within which your content can move and shift, reflowing depending on the needs of the user.
But the thing is, Tap! showcases that you needn’t just jump from PNG to PDF to HTML: there are alternatives to all of these things that give you enough precision while also providing accessible content that enables you to keep more than a couple of issues on your iPad before being forced to delete your entire music collection. Again: try something new. Build for the medium. Start with a blank canvas, not a readymade that essentially forces you into a particular way of working that is not optimal.
The article’s conclusion is particularly maddening in this respect:
So there you have it. Magazine readers need not despair about the appearances of their magazines for too much longer, as publishers are working to optimize their editions. The fix is relatively simple: publishers will have to increase the resolution of their image and video files, and export their digital editions as PDFs. iPad 3 owners will have to suffer longer download times, and won’t be able to store as many magazines on their devices as iPad 1 and 2 owners, but that’s the price one pays for a visually stunning reading experience, no?
No. That’s the price we pay for publishers not following Apple’s own advice and thinking different, instead choosing to cling to the wreckage of essentially deprecated ways of working.
Further reading: Tap!’s editor weighs in on the new iPad’s display and the supposed bloating of magazine apps.
I think layout control is a red herring. It’s more the fact that most publishers don’t have developers, don’t want an entirely new workflow, and don’t want to commission bespoke solutions that they then have to maintain. And I can’t really blame them for that.
It’ll change when Adobe gives publishers tools that don’t suck, or somebody replaces Adobe.
Ironically, one type of magazine that looks fine on the new iPad is Zinio, deprecated by some as “PDF shovelware”. Even though the Zinio UI looks crunchy at the moment because it hasn’t been optimised for Retina, magazine pages look great and type can be zoomed crisply because it’s rendered on the fly. It’s not really an issue if images are still 1024×768 because they look fine (many editions already have larger zoomable images anyway).
In areas that have to be pre-rendered for transparency effects (eg soft shadows overlapping type) the resolution hasn’t yet been increased, but doing so should be trivial and will only marginally affect file size because it doesn’t (usually) mean rasterising the whole page.
Tap! is a magazine about the iPad for iPad users which is published only on the iPad. It won’t scale to the the magazine industry as a whole, which has to accommodate multiple platforms, in most cases still beginning with print.
Nor does its (very nicely conceived) platform offer a solution to the problem of how to deliver content reflecting established magazine production values on the iPad. The Retina display means, in principle, that we can forget screen-optimised body text fonts and deliver pages designed using the full arsenal of traditional professional typography that will appear as clear and beautiful as in print – if not more so. That, to me, is a digital magazine.
Tap! looks great, but It’s not a digital magazine, it’s a hardware-optimised website. All of its type is set on the fly by software. Nothing is kerned. Nothing could be pulled out and shown as an example of the typographic arts, unless you count having sensible leading and a reasonable number of words per line.
This seems to be missing an awful lot of what an iPad magazine could be. I’m not convinced that a dedicated app with more whirly clicky bits is inherently “more optimal”. Arguably it enables more exploration of what digital magazines may be like in the future, but a magazine is not a wireframe – it should be a finished product. Clearly, reading facsimile A4 pages on the screen isn’t ideal, but I don’t think the only way forward from there is to abandon the principle that a page should be designed by a designer until it’s finished, and then delivered to the reader intact. Using the Retina display to deliver fixed columns of Georgia seems like being offered the lipstick and bringing your own pig.
Another thing is that publishers will bend over backwards to keep the design (I’m not specifically speaking about overall page layout) as close to the printed thing — using the same fonts, style rules (the masthead needs to sit in X position!) etc. Which means they’ll more likely that not (sadly) opt for the easiest way out: PDF or PNG so they can a) have absolute control b) use their fonts because sometimes there are no screen alternatives or versions available, and the iOS font list is still fairly limited. (By the way I’m not agreeing with those solutions, just commenting on things I’ve seen/experienced)
I’m the lead developer of the platform on which Tap! for iPad runs; I figured I’d weigh in with a few thoughts:
“What Vogue did — and what all other titles will have to do in the coming weeks — is begin exporting their digital editions as PDFs, said Koch.”
This makes me a bit sad – and, given that our platform also caters for around 1000 issues of magazines all running on PDF format, you’d think I’d be rooting for PDF in a way. One thing we’re all very conscious of (particularly Tap! – they had a “fun” time with their last issue’s cover) is that the specifications gap between a first- and third-generation iPad is vast and rather hard to cater for. If PDF were performant on first-gen iPads, they would have used it from the very beginning; switching to it because retina has forced their hand seems like it’s going to cause an unpleasant experience for millions of users on older hardware.
“Unfortunately, he said, magazine files will be larger for iPad 3 readers because the image and video files need to be delivered at a higher resolution.”
This is a remarkable bit of deception, IMHO. I get emails every week asking me to look at new or improved magazines on the iPad, so put simply I feel I’m pretty well-placed to talk about how people are using the device. And something that is nearly universally true is that most magazines don’t play high-resolution video – some, even film-focused titles, often play videos that are 1/4 the res of a non-retina screen, never mind a retina screen. Sure, these don’t look great, but most folks don’t notice because movies, well, *move* – your eye is more interested in the movement than the sharpness.
So, while I hope movies get bumped up a little in size, that’s not a retina or non-retina issue. As for images, I’d love to see them at retina, but I’m genuinely not worried about it for the most part – rendered, non-retina text looks dreadful on a retina screen, but most photos look quite good. It would take us only a few minutes to put together a test along the lines of “Here’s Tap! 15 with retina pics, and here it is with non-retina pics”, then ask folks to tell the difference without squinting 🙂
I should also add that if our competitors are anything like Future, they’re already noodling around with ways to make non-retina stuff look better on retina displays – there’s a surprising amount that can be accomplished at the technical level.
“Native text is smaller than rendering text to flat images—even newbie web designers understand this. It’s also ignoring the accessibility drawbacks of rendering to flat images.”
Yes, you are of course quite right; I have a store of examples that are, frankly, terrifying, from companies that should know better.
“It’s more the fact that most publishers don’t have developers, don’t want an entirely new workflow, and don’t want to commission bespoke solutions that they then have to maintain. And I can’t really blame them for that.”
“No one got fired for choosing IBM” is now being refreshed with Adobe in Big Blue’s place 🙂
But you’re right: many of us already use InDesign, so DPS is a shoo-in because it does an alright job at solving the needs we have.
“Ironically, one type of magazine that looks fine on the new iPad is Zinio, deprecated by some as “PDF shovelware”.”
I agree that this is very interesting. A number of people have been very disparaging about PDF replica software, not least some folk from Cupertino. However, PDFs look *great* on retina displays, to the point where I’ve actually had conversations with magazine teams that end with: “listen, I know you *think* you want something like Tap!, but what you *actually* want is an iPad-sized PDF with some interactivity glued on.”
“Tap! is a magazine about the iPad for iPad users which is published only on the iPad. It won’t scale to the the magazine industry as a whole, which has to accommodate multiple platforms, in most cases still beginning with print.”
Porting to other platforms is facile, and this feels like a bit of a straw man argument – the fact that Tap! is published on the iPad is very nice, but it’s not tied to the device by any means.
“Nor does its (very nicely conceived) platform offer a solution to the problem of how to deliver content reflecting established magazine production values on the iPad.”
Sure it does – it’s just that the Tap! team made a conscious decision to veer closer to an app rather than a magazine. If I were to show you [REDACTED], [REDACTED] or [REDACTED] – all due to launch in the next few months – I think you’d see quite a variety of approaches, all built using the same platform. I sit on the same floor as all of Future’s senior designers, and we’re all working full time to give designers better tools. And parallax. But mostly better tools. And parallax. (https://twitter.com/#!/twostraws/status/183244599198892033)
“Tap! looks great, but It’s not a digital magazine, it’s a hardware-optimised website. All of its type is set on the fly by software. Nothing is kerned. Nothing could be pulled out and shown as an example of the typographic arts, unless you count having sensible leading and a reasonable number of words per line.”
I don’t think that’s very fair. But then again I also don’t think that a magazine becomes a magazine because someone has kerned the text nicely, so perhaps we just come at this from very different angles 🙂
“I’m not convinced that a dedicated app with more whirly clicky bits is inherently “more optimal”.”
I don’t think anyone is saying that. For my part, I despise digital magazines that have many interactive things on one page – it feels like the kind of play set you’d give to a baby to keep itself amused. But I do think that a dedicated app that lets hard-of-sight people read the text, that lets social people share the text, and that lets back-issue collectors search the text, is a darn sight closer to where we ought to be than flat pictures of beautifully kerned typography.
As a side note, why don’t more people talk about iBooks Author? It outputs HTML while allowing some rather impressive control over typography. Some things are still missing (and arguably will remain missing until WebKit just does it – optical margin alignment, anyone?) but it still does a great job of giving designers more layout control.
When Koch mentioned HTML was just images and text, was he comparing it to PDF rather than to flattened images?
The Adobe guy is always going to recommend PDF over HTML. Daft that the author bothered to ask.
@Adam: I think as per our Twitter conversation yesterday, it really depends on what you class asa magazine. I disagree about the wireframe argument, because most magazines work to templates that text is flowed into. There are ways in which digital magazines like Tap! can have multiple and unique templates. The only real difference is in the fit-and-finish, that last piece of precision that enables you to tweak the kerning on an individual letter. But in return you get benefits that don’t exist within other formats, not least far superior accessibility.
I still find the early website comparison interesting, because it really feels like that’s where we are for digital mags. Back then, I remember people arguing with me to transfer their marketing material directly to the web, and I was arguing that we needed to take advantage of the medium itself. Yet many early websites were literal facsimiles of print material—effectively scans. Then there was something of a backlash, producing almost the opposite kind of site. Now, we have a fairly mature medium that is almost a hybrid. People care deeply about typography and layout, and the technology is rushing to match those demands. I see precisely the same thing happening in digital magazines, but PDFs are only a step away from a scan—I believe we need something new. Is Tap! that new? I don’t know, but I certainly find it more interesting and usable than reading a PDF on my iPad, and I’m eager to see what the team will produce now it is free from print-first.
@Tom: I agree that most publishers will do as you say, but I hope—probably naïvely—that the Retina iPad scenario will make at least some of them now think about their systems. Churn from InDesign has screwed up almost every major brand, making them look pretty daft. What irks, though, is articles like that one on Mashable, essentially saying this caught everyone, apart from those quick enough to quickly retool output to PDF. What about Tap!? What about the Guardian? Annoying.
@Paul: Good point about PDF. In fact, MacFormat PDFs regularly screw up my iMac, let alone my iPad, and so there will almost certainly be cases where complex layouts bring iPads to a halt, especially older ones. I guess they can then be optimised or amended, but this does show that the ‘build once and deploy’ model really doesn’t exist.
I look forward to your ‘redacted’ trio!
“I don’t think that’s very fair. But then again I also don’t think that a magazine becomes a magazine because someone has kerned the text nicely, so perhaps we just come at this from very different angles”
I think Adam also comes at this from the angle of the old guard. It’s pretty clear from flicking through any issue of MacUser that plenty of care goes into the layout and the type, with most pages being created individually. But this isn’t what makes for a magazine—it’s what makes for a beautiful and well-considered print magazine. As I’ve already said, many magazines aren’t doing this kind of thing and are closer to the wireframe model that Tap! uses in its app.
However, I do wonder about the “whirly clicky bits” comment. Tacked-on stuff that impacts negatively on the user experience should clearly be avoided, but cute little add-ons, like the odd bit of movement? Nothing wrong with that, and not really any different from magazines that do clever things with specialised inks for their covers.
“But I do think that a dedicated app that lets hard-of-sight people read the text, that lets social people share the text, and that lets back-issue collectors search the text, is a darn sight closer to where we ought to be than flat pictures of beautifully kerned typography.”
That pretty much sums up my thinking. I guess many publishers are determined to hold their content in formats that cannot easily be copied, but to block social sharing, searching and accessibility seems like a massive step back. I genuinely do not understand why any publisher would want to do that.
@Anthony: To be fair to Adobe, its tools do export to HTML, and its web team is in some areas doing very interesting things. But I think Koch is trying to appeal to the magazine people by saying “you can export stuff and it will LOOK like it does in print—yay!” rather than advocating a system that would perhaps be more usable and future-proof (or at least future-looking).
STEVE NEVER WOULDA LET THIS HAPPEN
[…] interesting article by Craig Grannell over at RevertToSaved. It focuses on the current state of magazines designed for Apple’s iPad and how the methods […]
@Adam While I love MacUser and have subscribed for probably over a decade(!), I am in despair over the current digital format.
I switched as I don’t want to have loads of paper cluttering up my house and I have plenty of digital devices on which to read it. But the digital version is so unuseable that I’m seriously considering unsubscribing completely.
Articles are beautifully designed for the print edition but just don’t work on the iPad. Two page spreads are the worst culprit here – when you’re viewing in portrait one page at a time, sometimes they don’t make any sense. Even worse, sometimes you have to scroll from side to side just to read the text!
This is unacceptable user interface design and I don’t understand how MacUser can stomach it!