I Publish Architecture & Design

This is one of the best magazines I’ve seen for the iPad with a positive mix of multimedia, photos and text, giving coherence to a good editorial work. This video clearly shows the design character of the application, the intuitive user interface and the quality of the included media, either video or photos. We asked a few questions to Ninan Kurien from Edition29…

Your background seems to be the Motor multimedia editorial content. Why the jump to new fields such as architecture, cinema and extreme sports? We have been publishing various subjects that interest us for over 12 years, always trying to be the first and innovative on new platforms. We have published these subject for many years on new media platforms, including the first multimedia magazines to be distributed by TimeWarner on the DVD & Broadband Video platforms at the very start of DVD and Broadband . Later, in the late 90’s we had a joint venture with EMAP, an European media conglomerate, with whom we published multimedia versions of Extreme Sports, etc. They owned magazines like FHM, The Face, Arena, Surfer, Powder, Snowboarder, etc. A couple of years ago they sold all their media properties. Also, in the late 90’s we had the first visual broadband Search Engine called RAMPT which was financed by TimeWarner and Intel, it was used as the first Broadband Search Engine on Netscape and Time Warner’s Broadband service called RoadRunner. We have always been about presenting Visual Stories on new media.

Architects are gadget geeks. Was that a reason to develop an app for them? Do the sales fill the expectations? The iPad is a great platform to showoff amazing imagery, Architecture can be very cinematic and it was a natural choice as a subject for this medium. Yes, the sales have been very promising.

Your iPad app on architecture is beautiful, but it looks similar to the Cinema, Motor and Extreme Sports ones. Don’t you think that the specificity of each content should be translated into the graphic design and navigation? The Edition29 software is really a VISUAL BROWSER for the Tablet Form Factor making use of the capabilities of the platform, it can be customized to a certain extent, but just like any other Browser, the basic functions stay the same only the content changes. We are now working with several amazing select 3rd party publishers to bring their editorial as Edition29 editions, they will have their own look and feel with the design of the content pages.  

Architecture is more about panorama. Most architectural photos are in landscape format. Does the fact that your app is mostly Portrait affects the way you show up content? The Edition29 platform was built to copy a book or magazine, even the layouts have an editorial function and is meant to remain the way it is presented by the editorial team.

Why the included details of the project —text, drawings, diagrams, etc— appear so small, blog-like, over a background photo? Is that an editorial option? or a coding restraint? In the future these aspects of design will change, it is an evolutionary project, each of our select publishing partners will decide how to design their editorial. It is not a coding constrain. Also, the technical aspects of Edition29 will evolve to be even more robust.

You can buy Edition29_ARCHITECTURE_001 and Edition29_ARCHITECTURE_002 from the App Store.