I got a hold of a copy of “The Project” – new, hyped magazine for the iPad that’s supposed to revolutionize the way we think about digital magazines. I got to play with it for a while and despite the fact it’s pretty pricey (almost 3 euros) it also has some really cool ideas too. It probably won’t revolutionize the market but it brought a couple of things to it and we might see them in other publications.
What’s wrong
First let’s focus on what’s wrong with “The Project”. There are basically two main things wrong with it and they are : the price and the file size. The price is a no-brainer – we know it’s important to pay the designers and writers, but Newsweek is cheaper – and has pretty good writers. Second thing : The amount of data you have to download with each episode is so big, that if you have a 16gb iPad you won’t be able to have too many issues on if you want to have anything else on it. Sure having high quality animations is nice but somewhere we should draw the line between content and flashy additions, or at least having simpler advertisements (there’s one with TWO high quality videos, and some with lots of high quality photos). Sure it’s nice to have movies of Jeff Bridges to illustrate the interview. Audio samples are good too. But if you can’t fit it in under 100mb then some things should be changed around here. Seriously. Also the interface is pretty easy but at the same time has some additions that make it harder (panels on the right? Small buttons?). It should be MUCH simpler with just the swipes to control and an ocassional tap to play a video. Additional buttons are a bad idea unless they’re on some sort of a taskbar.
The goods
For one it is really pretty. I mean the tokio panorama that slowly darkens was stunning. Jeff Bridges walking on the beach to walk away from the text showing up and then you continue to read. Yeah it’s all nice and flashy. (no pun intended adobe)
It also has really good writing, so as a magazine it also works out. Even without the futuristic look. The Ad’s are following the new sort of unwritten rule that iAd’s advertised – to be somewhat engaging, but really I wouldn’t play with them anyway. So it’s more of a distraction that looks nice.
Summing up
It shows promise in a sense that it’s a rich media, offline magazine that is nicely written and looks pretty stunning. But it should focus more on reducing both the price and the file size if they want it to be a success. Flipboard showed us that the future of magazines is personalization of content, either by your friends choices or by a bunch of web sources. And it’s nicely formatted too. The only thing Flipboard is lacking is an offline mode, but it is in the works so we’re gonna see how that will stack up against bigger mags like the Project. For now some players are getting closer to the ideal web magazine. The future of modern publishing just got brighter.