DIGITAL
10.11.13
8 Publishers Experimenting with Longform Features
Sports Illustrated jumped into the game this week -- along with their cheeky tagline: longform since 1954.
With the lack of a great WYSIWYG design tool, its crucial to have a close working relationship between design and development. I asked SI Creative Director Chris Hercik about their process and goals:
"This shows the power of having a developer (Louis Gubitosi) sitting right next to the art director (Alicia Hallett). The goal is to have an immersive lean back experience while maintaining a print design sensibility.... All on your desktop. Actually on any platform since it's responsive."
These are not publishers creating micro-sites, but exploring an immersive feature-length story that is the essence of traditional magazine-style storytelling. Strong art direction, photography, illustration, and infographics are at the core of these stories.
While many of these are designed to be responsive to desktop, tablet, and phone screens, some are quite slow on anything smaller than desktop. It's still early, and the rules are not yet set, which makes it an exciting time to be exploring this new format.
The gallery above features some notable longform features from several publishers, and here are some links worth checking out:
• Complex: Danny Brown
• EPIC Magazine: Deep Sea Cowboys
• ESPN: Here & Gone and The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis
• Pitchfork: MGMT and Janekke Monae
• Sports Illustrated: The Ghost of Speedy Cannon
• Newsweek
• The New York Times: A Short History of the Highrise and Tomato Can Blues
• The Washington Post: Cycling's Road Forward
I'm looking forward to more experimentation in this exciting area. H/T to Joe Zeff for a few of these links!