MagPlus and the Digital Landscape

Digital Publishing is one of those fields in Digital Media that has been around for quite a while and that everyone knows about, but hasn’t been leveraged in a manner that is fitting for its very powerful medium: the digital tablet. Think digital publications such as National Geographic.

What exactly do I mean by ‘not being leveraged in a manner that is fitting for its very powerful medium’? Well, despite the amount of time that Digital Publishing has had to grow, many digital publications available on digital tablets to this day are essentially just PDFs of their print counterparts, which makes for a boring, static, and many times, painful experience that could have otherwise been interesting and captivating.

So exactly how do we as designers work to combat this? Well, we can start in the most simple of ways possible: by simply adding little interactions here and there within our digital publication that makes our product stand out from the competition, even if it is initially just by a little. After all, a little goes a long way, right? We can all contribute to the fight against static publications.

One way to contribute to such a fight is through the double-edged sword and design tool that is MagPlus. MagPlus is a third-party piece of software that works with Adobe’s InDesign, and it allows you to create multi-issue publications such as magazines, catalogs, and different types of collateral. Well that doesn’t sound too different from InDesign’s vanilla capabilities, does it? Well, with the use of MagPlus’ special layers and the other special tools within it, it allows you to create interactive publications for digital tablets. And once you create your digital publication, MagPlus allows you to preview it on your device, which is a fantastic feature to have to quickly iterate and test your digital publication.

For my (quite small, but effective) contribution to such a fight, I worked on a digital magazine about the four main characters in SEGA’s Sonic The Hedgehog series: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Eggman. My primary goal in creating this digital publication was to create something that actually had some interaction to it, even if it was in a small way. It was also a noble goal, as we were just learning the MagPlus software and it was definitely an alien thing to all of us in the course at the time.

I created a total of four main articles within the publication, one main article for each character. With these articles, I wanted a design that really showcased the characters themselves; as such, I decided to incorporate a design with dark background elements and bright, colorful foreground elements to contrast such background elements. The design of the different Sonic The Hedgehog characters themselves was an influence in this design choice as they tend to sport bright primary colors. As such, it was a fitting design choice.

To supplement the four main articles within the publication, I also created the cover (of course), as well as a table of contents and advertisement that fit within the design paradigm of bright and colorful on dark.

Throughout the design process of this digital publication, I wanted to ensure that the typography within the publication looked great and was easily readable through the use of proper contrast and line-height. I also made sure that all of the touch areas within the publication, such as the popups and swiping interactions, were all large enough for a comfortable touch-based experience; this care for touch areas is one of the most important things that a designer can do to ensure a great mobile experience for people.

Overall, my experience with this digital publication project was both frustrating and delightful. Frustrating because of the newness of MagPlus and its many intricacies, but delightful because of the experience and insights I gained in mobile publication design, user interactions, and Adobe InDesign itself.

John Toral is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. The following article relates to (Digital Publication 1) in the (DGM 2270 Course) and is representative of the skills learned.