woodwing

Today People magazine was launched on the iPad. Although I'm a bit biased I think it's fair to say that this is by far the best Digital Magazine available today. Like TIME Magazine was an important industry milestone on iPad launch day, People is setting the bar to a new level for the industry.

 For those who haven't see the App yet, let me explain why it's so great.

Interactivity
The People App contains a lot of interactivity in a way that really adds value to the reader experience. Hotspots are used extensively to show alternative content or additional detail. Nice example is the display of TV star's kids, you can guess who the parent is and tap to see the parent. For an article on New Orleans they have used a very visual design with hotspots to popup the story behind a photo.

Second look 10 differences picture that shows the answers with a tab. Access to extra content for a celebrity, like the latest news, bio or slideshow archive (showing 197 photo's of Sandra Bullock!)

A story on Katy Parry uses a nice panaroma photo over 2 pages, looks great when swiping and via a hotspot also available as single page photo.

Scrollable areas (a new 1.4 feature) are used quite extensive to have one or multiple scrollable areas on a page. Nice example of this is the right hand bar on the cover page showing an interactive visual table of content.
Further many movie trailers and song samples are available.

Free for print-subscribers
Print subscribers can download the issues for free, whereas the rest of the world can purchase single issues.

E-commerce integration
Tap to directly buy albums from iTunes or books from Amazon. Nice for the reader and I bet People will get a nice commission on these sales as well.

Extensive Navigation

• Graphical page flipper with scrubber and large thumbnails
• TOC list
• Back/forward buttons
• Both swipe and single tab to go to next/prev page
• Two-finger swipe to go to next article.

People Team: you have done a great job, I'm impressed!