GQ iPad App v2.0

Above: GQ, May 2011 TOC. Below: The iPad version.

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Department like Manual and Intelligence (below) leverage stripped down design elements from the print edition. 

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During the design process, Fred says, the department sections of the book (Manual, Intelligence, etc.) translated gracefully to the tablet screen. However, the features were a bigger challenge:

Pretty early on we felt that some of the features that we loved best in the magazine didn't work quite as well on the smaller iPad screen. Suddenly they seemed a little too complicated, too crowded, maybe too eclectic typographically. The power of both the photo and the display type, packed together on the same screen, felt diminished. It was indeed a 'replica,' something a bit less authentic than the original.

We had heard that a common complaint with other apps was that people couldn't tell the difference between the ads and the edit (neither could my mother, by the way). By this time, we also knew that we might lose the protected sanctuary of the feature well in the digital version.

While everyone else continued to work hard designing the rest of the book and their conversions to the tablet, Tom Alberty (GQ Art Director) and I broke away and concentrated solely on the features for about a week. We imagined ourselves working for Apple, set with the mission of designing magazine content for their new apparatus. Even though the clock was ticking fast, this little head game allowed us to hit 'reset,' attack the problems fresh, strip it all the way down and build it back new. 

We distilled the typography to its most distinctively recognizable GQ state (a font we've used for some time, ironically enough called 'Replica'). We modified the structure of the issue and added frontice pages that served as sectional contents pages. We found different, almost cinematic, ways to roll out a story that seemed bolder and truer to the medium--in fact, made possible by it.

As simple as it all may sound now, this was the breakthrough moment. We we're designing for the machine.

Postscript: There was, of course, lots (lots!) more to be done before this beast was put to bed, and plenty of major contributions made by everyone in design. A special tip of the hat to Dora Somosi, Chelsea Cardinal, Mary Stiehl, Devin Gordon, Michael Hainey and Jim Nelson.