RESPONSE: Designing a magazine across platforms

This week, most of my time was spent designing iPad pages and helping Erica with the website home page for Modern Midwest. The first thing we did was look around on some city magazine sites to see what we liked and what we didn't like. Then essentially, we put together our site by combining a lot of the pieces that we liked. Erica did a fantastic job making the header look fun and modern, establishing an online brand for our magazine. We tried to incorporate a lot of the same typefaces from our magazine into the website, in order to keep them somewhat consistent and further establish our brand.

Designing the iPad pages with Mag+ turned out to be a lot less difficult than I thought it would be, but it was still somewhat limiting. I struggled to find photos that would work well both horizontally and vertically, especially since most of the photos I used for my BBQ story had people in them. It is also kind of strange covering up people with the scrolling text. In the future, I just think it's something to keep in mind when taking / editing photos. Be careful not to zoom in too close on the subjects with at least some of your photos. That way that extra non-essential space around them can be utilized when designing for the iPad. Right now, the page I showed in class is functional, but I'd like to make it a little sleeker. We're also planning on adding some other elements to it that you wouldn't find in the print edition.