Tablets and newspapers

Agreed 100 percent. Crossthread: I spent my last 11 years in newspapers mostly as a page designer. I think there is absolutely a need for design skill, no matter the delivery method, but that skill should be applied on the implementation (template) end, not so much day-to-day.

 

Traditional page design will probably become less important if/when we move toward templated tablet presentations, and you're right in that pages will need to be set up with responsive designs. That'll mean either a responsive page for a website (which a lot of places are moving toward) or a different version of each publication tailored to each device, which would be limited even because there's no way you can tailor to every smartphone out there.

I still see a place for design on certain specialty products, but it will be transferring page design principles to digital design, taking what works in both and applying it and then ditching what doesn't, and taking advantage of all the things you can do online you can't do in print (embedding video and audio instead of just photos, for instance). Think about some of the presentations ESPN does with it's longer features, or the presentations of certain magazine sites online. There's already a move by companies like Adobe to make their products, including InDesign, more meaningful for a digital production process; newspapers just need to invest the time and money to train up their designers on how to do this and then find ways to take advantage of it (which I think there are plenty of opportunities there to make money).

 

Adobe Muse seems to be a step in that direction, no?

 

Yeah. I've played with Muse a little but not enough. I know you can export InDesign to HTML and Flash now, and with Adobe DPS and some third-party programs, you can go straight from InDesign to an app version of a layout complete with embedded video, photos and links.

 

People crapped on the ProJo's e-edition here; with the storm this weekend, they offered the e-edition free to keep readers up to date and to not piss off subscribers who couldnt get a copy of the paper.
Once I figured it out, I like it. It's nice to scan a paper and read stories that draw your interest.
Downside is you don't read as much as you normally would. I ignored the agate page in sports whereas if I had a hard copy of the paper, I'd scan through it.
Photos also weren't as effective.
Still, I enjoyed it.

 

E-editions that exact replicas are horrible. Computer and tablet screens are different mediums and designers have to realize that in order for e-editions to be successful.

 

I don't think the problem is designers most of the time. I think the problem is front office people who buy into the sales pitch they get from companies that offer to convert a print edition to an e-edition. Instead of putting the effort into developing something that works better, they take the easy way out and buy into a product that gets the dynamic wrong. But if you ask most designers, they completely realize that an e-edition should be presented differently from the print edition.

 

I didn't mean local copy editors, but higher-up programmers and marketing "gurus."

 

When I said here, I didn't mean SJ; I was talking in state.
I like the replica. It's extremely easy to use. I could see younger, more tech savvy people hating it.

 

I've argued a lot that e-editions should have "expanded" content. The idea of Sporting News Daily was a great one in concept because it could be smaller on less-busy days and bigger on days when it was needed (the day after Selection Sunday, etc.)

An e-edition could have as many pages as possible, in theory, because your space on the web is endless.

 

That's the obvious next step ... IF you work for a newspaper/web site that cares about the quality of the e-edition.

At this point, our shop is doing the easy thing: We lay out the print pages, and they're converted to PDFs and slapped together into an e-edition.

So much more could be done, but it requires more $taffing and $pending. I'm not holding my breath.

 

I still like looking at box scores in print better than the back and forth of doing it on an Ipad, but that's about the only thing I like more about print. And that could be fixed with either a double tap enlarging or a quick finger swipe from box score to box score.

The apps now want to give me a summary first, then I have to click to the score.

If anyone can suggest a decent one, please let me know.