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Mag+ Concept Shows a Full-Bodied Future for Magazines

by Thomas Houston on December 17, 2009 at 10:05 AM

E-readers may be a hot gift this year, but the devices are still very much underdeveloped. Most can only display text and images in black and white, and page load time pales in comparison to modern computers, hand-held devices, or (gasp) even paper-based books.

Though text-based articles are increasingly readable on many modern smartphones, magazine-type content, marked by expansive layouts mixing text and photography, has yet to find a viable digital format. So Mag+, a collaboration between designers at BERG and Bonnier R&D, publisher of Popular Science, imagines how magazines could work in digital form (check out the video after the break). The concept envisions content being displayed on a touchscreen tablet that lets the user fluidly move between text, image, and video, creating an interactive reading space that is more tactile than Web exploration. Regardless of whether the issue-based magazine format -- which lends itself nicely to the integrative nature of Mag+ -- will survive in the digital age, we hope more companies take a 'page' from the BERG and Bonnier project. Make e-readers less like browsers, and more like, well, smartbooks. [From: BERG]

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

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Tags: berg, bonnier, concepts, design, ereader, ereaders, future, hgg, mag+, magplus, top

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