Hottest Trends to Transform Your Blog into Online Magazine

INKONIQ
INKONIQ
Aug 24, 2017 · 6 min read

Flipboard, InShorts and many other players are disrupting the traditional media by innovating the way content is delivered. Millions of VC dollars are a proof of their success. The old school way of replicating print content into digital is the not the way for media houses to stay relevant. Moreover, traditional media also need a design revamp in addition to great content to face the might of these emerging players. They have to delve deeper into the latest design trends to shape up their future strategy. Here’s how top online magazines are nailing the user experience.

Hey! I am the FEATURED Post

Magazine interface can’t afford to have a simple blog layout, a prominent featured posts widget can help them differentiate. It could be either in the form of a fixed grid or a huge carousel auto-rotating to display a series of blog posts.

ZDNet has an interesting mix of grid and carousel, with a blend of large and small thumbnails for different posts.

There are more variations of grid. In Vogue, a featured story widget fills the entire screen with a supersized image to draw the maximum attention. You could also give a mix of different size thumbnails to give a professional look to the magazine as in the case of Digital Trends. However, if you want to give multiple stories the same leverage on the screen, you can opt for active carousels to automatically display multiple posts. Carousels are not highly recommended for usability though.

VIDEOS, now part of your regular news feed

Video consumption is at all-time high now. Videos have long been known to create maximum impact on fans. They increase the level of engagement and are also shared on social sharing sites. The new Facebook and Twitter timelines also support videos. Moreover, users are consuming media more on their mobile devices and prefer watching their news instead of reading them.

In Wired, videos have a crucial place in the homepage design, with many other leading online magazines following too.

Furthermore, reviews and ratings are often captured well in videos. On the Verge homepage, review videos and interesting footages aesthetically occupy the featured story grids. Furthermore, you can watch video right from the thumbnail by clicking the Play button. Videos are sandwiched between the articles on the newsfeed as well. But the best part is that the videos don’t auto-play on the feed and users can play whenever they want to.

Tag along TAGLINES with titles

InShorts has started a trend of delivering news in 60 words and they are pretty much successful in that. Magazines also replicating this trend, writing headlines with a tagline to give away extra information about the story. Taglines are great as they give people a chance to skim through the main details and decide if they want to read further. This trend is finding more acceptance with Mashable and TheNextWeb (TNW).

Another interesting trend that is picking up is to showcase titles on image tiles and displaying taglines on mouseover. The tagline should not overpower the titles. In this case, a color contrast or different font sizes can draw visitors to headline first and sequentially guide them to the tagline. Wired uses contrast while TNW and Verge employ gradient to highlight the blog titles on the image.

Watch your TYPE!

Attractive titles, catchy subheadings, and beautiful imagery are important, but typefaces are equally crucial. The font size, line length, and line spacing affect readability of the interface. The font you choose also plays an important role with brain processing information better if an easy-to-read font is chosen. However, creative fonts come across as personal and make the message more impactful.

Going for a creative handwritten font is like choosing the best of the worlds. You take a clear font and intersperse it with a creative font to craft your own creative handwritten fonts. Experimenting with fonts gave a fresher outlook to the AV Club Magazine, and increased readability at the same time. Giant typefaces are also emerging as a trend. Verge, which has earned a very loyal reader base in a very short span of time, also uses a supersized font for blog titles.

Honey! I have SIMILAR content for you

Online magazine is not about one or two posts but hundreds or even thousands of stories. This even includes following a particular story for days. Old related stories are often referenced in the blog, but it’s not recommended to clutter the blog with too many links. The best way to feature similar stories is by introducing a related posts section. This effectively engages readers to browse within the site.

There are many ways of showcasing related content. In Inkoniq blog, we prefer to display thumbnails of old posts at the bottom of each post. You can do a TechCrunch by directly adding related links into the content. You can even add a sidebar showcasing a bunch of similar articles on the same topic. The sidebar could also feature a bunch of posts from a large series of projects relevant to that particular topic.

If you don’t have multiple links about the same topic, you could do some internal linking like TNW and Mashable. They even highlight the text by using a different color or font types or size.

FIX that scrolling sidebar

Online magazines have a fairly common trend of a navigation bar fixed with the main content of the post. The title of the post is also pinned to the navigation bar. However, recently fixed sidebars are also regular that remain in view even when you scroll down the main content. In long form content, a fixed sidebar is perfect as it will be in view at all times.

Wired features advertisements, free giveaways, related and most popular content on the fixed scrolling sidebars. This increases the interactivity and also the number of eBooks downloads, seminar registrations, email subscriptions, and ad clicks.

I want everything, let’s CUSTOM made homepage

In contrast to a typical blog design with thumbnails for posts, another trend of designing custom homepage layouts is emerging. These homepages have columns changing based on the page layout. It’s a trend often seen in magazines with numerous posts.

Vulture Magazine features multi-level columns, a horizontal column featuring the latest blog posts, a featured post widget, a vertical column displaying the blog feeds based on timelines and many more sections below. Custom blog pages also feature different sections for showcasing social feeds in a linear fashion.

Closing…

Bloggers can opt for a simple layout for their personal blogs, but world class publications are expected to provide exceptional content and a design layout that does justice to the content. It’s a bit difficult to pick the best layout for your business. If you need a professional help, drop us a line and let our experts suggest an ideal magazine layout for your business.

This article was first published on Inkoniq Blog.

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INKONIQ

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INKONIQ

UX driven Engineering company based out of San Francisco and Bangalore. We work with brands and startups to help craft awesome experiences for mobile and web.

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