I Publish Architecture & Design

Mário Garcia, one of the most valuable Newspaper Gurus of today, asks a couple questions to Brian O’ Connor, the creative director of the Iconist, the new culture and lifestyle magazine from Axel Springer.

This magazine is speccially made for the iPad, exploring this new digital media to deliver a rich experience on the subjects it cover…

Mario What were the design challenges that you faced here that were new, that you, as a print designer had not experienced before?

Brian I think strategically there is always point of no-return in iPad storytelling because of the technical back end and the production you need to know what you want to do and be sure it works, for instance in print you make ideas print them out present them and more often than not have to change a lot that is really not an option at the moment.

Mario What are some of the design strategies that are universal, work the same for print as well as for the tablet?

Brian I have found that print designers and particularly editorial designers have been able to adapt really quickly too the medium, in my view classic Internet designers or journalists have a bigger learning curve, our production company had a big problem making templates that switch from 1-2-3 columns for text, not because it was difficult more so because they couldn’t understand why I would want that. For a print designer it is perfectly obvious “keep the reader engaged”