The Wes Dispatch
Creating an Interactive publication
For this project, I set out to create an interactive magazine. A fully digital publication that takes advantage of being fully digital. I created this Interactive magazine in InDesign using MagPlus. My publication is called On Directors. This is a film publication that each issue would focus on a different director. The issue would cover things like the director’s style, movie suggestions, and cover some of the director’s movies.
For the first issue, I decided to focus on one of my favorite directors: Wes Anderson. Being a big fan and having tons of content, it was hard to decide which direction to go in. I decided to have the first section to give some basic information. It includes articles that cover background, style, color pallets, and the recurring cast of Wes Anderson movies. The second section covers the films of Wes Anderson. I wanted to include all but due to time constraints, I just was able to cover some of the more notable films.
Process
As most design projects start, I began with some rough sketching. This helped me to plan out the pages and where to layout the content. It also helped narrow down which content would actually be worth including.
Difficulties
I had a pretty good experience using MagPlus. There is a definite learning curve, but once I got the hang-of MagPlus it went pretty smooth. I ran into some problems with buttons but was able to figure it out. The main difficulties I had were with videos. Being a publication about film I wanted to include lots of videos. So I ended up having to crop videos into the iPad’s aspect ratio. Also, there weren’t always clips covering the content I wanted to show. So for some videos, I had to combine and cut up different videos. This took a while getting started because I haven’t done much video editing. But once I got the hang of it it was a pretty smooth sailing.
Highlighted Articles
A familiar Cast
Wes Anderson has assembled an excellent troupe of actors that appear in his movies. I wanted to make an article to highlight some actors who are in most movies. Through a popup, it gives some background on the actor’s relationship with Anderson and the roles they play and what movies they are in.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wes Anderson had a memorable first foray into animation with Fantastic Mr. Fox. I showed the cast and the critical reception of the film. I found a really good essay about the film on the criterion channel website. So I included that and tried to find interactive content to enhance the essay. I included a gallery that shows the illustrations the costumes were based off. In the essay, it mentions a song from the movie. So I included a button where you can play
AD
I wanted to include an interactive ad in the publication. All of Wes Anderson’s movies are in the criterion collection. So I created an ad for the criterion collection showcasing one of the movies. It allows the user to tap the poster for more information. I created the ad in Hype.
Conclusion
Overall I really enjoyed creating this publication. I learned so much about using MagPlus and InDesign. It pushed me to try and find ways to take advantage of a purely digital publication. And use these advantages to improve the reader’s experience.
