From print to tablet : a visual analysis of the transition of printed magazine layouts to touch screen tablet devices

Abstract

History has shown that major technological advancements in the production and delivery of magazine content have had an impact on magazine page layout and design. There have been a number of technological printing and production methods since Guttenberg's press in the mid-fifteenth century. While many of those advancements are incremental and minor in the overall history of printing, several milestones stand out as having the most impact on the layout of magazines. The introduction of digital touchscreen tablet devices, specific ally the iPad, have once again presented a technological challenge to the design and production of magazines. In order to understand and utilize the new medium to its fullest extent, research must be conducted to determine the possibilities as well as how traditionally printed page layout content may be translated to the screen of devices such as the iPad. This study hypothesizes that, overall, the majority of both individual component location and amount of page area occupied within the editorial content of the magazine will change substantially when content is transferred from a traditionally printed layout to the touch screen tablet device. To test the hypothesis, individual layout components, including headlines, decks, images, pullouts and subheads within two established magazines -- one primarily text-based and the other primarily image-based -- were compared. Each component, existing in both the printed and iPad layouts, were analyzed based on their relative positions within each page and the amount of area occupied within each page. The data collected and the comparisons made provide an understanding of not only any changes in components when translated from print to iPad, but to what degree each set of components were affected.