Publishing in focus

For publishing, this past twelvemonth has been all about the iPad app. Financially straitened publishers have grasped the tablet app with both hands because it offers them a new payable model not seen since the Web lured them into working for free. But apparently, app design has a steep learning curve. This has been a year of many failures, a handful of notable triumphs, and some important lessons.

Here, magazine design luminary Jeremy Leslie explains why you can’t crowbar a print magazine into an app, slap on some bells and whistles and hope to win awards – or readers.

Help for app designers is at hand in the form of eminent digital bods including Fray’s Simon Waterfall and The Noble Union’s Ryan Shelton, who offer technical critiques of their favourite – and least favourite – apps, and answer readers’ questions about app design.

Whatever platform you are working on, sourcing great illustration and photography is a mysterious art that demands great instincts and interpersonal skills. Here, art directors of publications including Icon, The Spectator, The Guardian and Time Out reveal who they like to work with and why.

While publishing companies have spent the past 15 years attempting to master the digital world, one small analogue corner of the industry has been painstakingly creating work that not only looks good, but feels and smells good too. The craft of bookbinding is almost as old as publishing itself, but today’s ’designer binders’ are creating contemporary, Modernist designs using some unexpected materials.

Emily Pacey, supplement Editor