Iguazu Falls Travel Guide: A Digital Publication
An interactive digital publication is a great way to showcase a travel guide. InDesign, used in conjunction with Mag+, was the tool I used to create a digital publication travel guide on Iguazu Falls.
Iguazu Falls is the largest waterfall system in the world. It divides the Iguazu River into upper and lower portions. It’s situated between the border of Brazil and Argentina and has been on my bucket list of places to visit since childhood.
I visited Iguazu Falls a couple of summers ago. It’s true that the falls at Iguazu is the main attraction but there’s a lot more to see and do there. So, with that in mind, I set out to create a dynamic travel guide for my favorite things to do at Iguazu.
Audience
My audience was nature lovers and adventure seekers alike who would benefit from learning about the main attractions at Iguazu prior to their first visit. I wanted to create a travel guide that would get my readers excited about experiencing Iguazu Falls.
Planning a Travel Guide
Initially I planned for 8verticals containing a few pages each. It would have been enough for the following:
‣ Cover and “How to Use” instructions
‣ Table of Contents
‣ Main Iguazu Attraction: The Devil’s Throat Falls
‣ Bird Sanctuary
‣ Macuco Boat Ride Tour
‣ The Rainforest
‣ A Large picture of the walking bridge to the Devil’s Throat Falls spanning two verticals
Later I added a 9th vertical: The Iguazu Falls National Park map (Brazilian side) that was made into an interactive map with links to different sections in the publication that readers could access by swiping up at any point (overlay).
Layout
Iguazu Falls is simply breathtaking. I knew I wanted lots of high-resolution images, and not a whole lot of text — images would speak for themselves for the most part.
Mag+ unique’s interactive layers can be used to creatively present content in several different ways.
For my layout, I used a few background layers (B layers) in order to make full size slides with the photos I collected. I used foreground layers (A layers) for free scrolling text for brief descriptions of each section. Readers could at any time double-click on the screen to turn the foreground layer off at any point to better appreciate the images.
My Iguazu Falls publication is meant to be viewing in portrait mode (more on why this is later). Most of the images I wanted to use were large and wide in landscape mode. InDesign crops both sides of such images to fit portrait mode. I wanted readers to be able to scroll horizontally to view the whole image. Luckily there’s a very simply fix for this in Mag+, and it can be accomplished by checking the pan box under Mag+ object panel.
Overlay Interactive Map
Another way I added interactivity was through an overlay map that can be accessed at any point by swiping up. The map allows readers to choose a random section of the publication to explore. Clicking on the corresponding icon on the map will take readers directly to that section without having them swipe through all sections in order — much like a visit to the real thing.
Mag+ allows this to work beautifully simply by placing the interactive map to the foreground A layer — allowing readers to turn it on and off with a double-click on the screen as needed.
Videos
Mag+ allows for videos to automatically start playing once the device is turned to a certain orientation. That’s why I created my publication in portrait mode so that readers can turn their devices to watch the videos in landscape orientation since most videos are shot in landscape mode.
Testing
Mag+’s simplicity to use is both a blessing and a curse. Great features such as panning and dynamic layering are as easy to implement with a simple click. Therein lies its downfall also, for the unsuspecting Mag+ designer. A check mark made in error or an image placed on the wrong layer, brings the whole project to a crashing halt. To makes matters worse, Mag+ tutorials I find on the web are vague and forums aren’t much help either, making it difficult to troubleshoot.
An issue I ran into was the overlay interactive map interfering with the video playing. For reasons I don’t fully understand, it would gray out the video and kept displaying the “turn the device” icon whenever I tried to get the video to play. After checking with sources, it was a simple fix: add both a portrait and a landscape mode page in your overlay vertical.
Conclusion
Mag+ is a powerful tool in its simplicity for InDesign for creating digital publications. It’s versatile, allowing for many creative uses of its layering ability. Overall, it’s a great tool to add to my web designer toolbox, and one that I’m excited to explore further.
