The New Yorker
For Graduate Design Studio I, each student was assigned an artifact to visualize. I hit the jackpot and got not one but two artifacts: the October 4 , 2010 issue of The New Yorker, that publication’s first issue to appear both in print and on the iPad. My goal was to compare and contrast these two objects to reveal the benefits and challenges publishers confront as they move their print content to a digital platform.
Collaborators
Timeline
4 weeksBrief
“Visualize the information space of the assigned artifact, making use of Wurman’s five hat racks as a way to organize and filter your information. After you fully grasp the information space, explore how to represent this as a large printed poster. The goal is to clearly explain the content, structure, and navigation of your information piece in an engaging manner.”
Process
I began by mapping out the content of the print edition with Post-it notes, each Post-it representing a page and color-coded according to content type. This allowed me to see the breakdown of the content more clearly and begin to understand the structure of the print edition. Through this process, I learned that advertising content is clustered towards the front of the print edition. Once I saw this, I went to the iPad to examine how ad content is structured in the digital version.
As I continued to mine for data, I felt myself going back to the print version again and again. I found the iPad version difficult to use, partially due to my unfamiliarity with it, but I also had a feeling design played a factor. Eventually, I realized that print artifacts are more usable because every page is accessible from other page. The structure is complex yet direct and intuitive. The iPad edition, however, forces the user to wade through multiple layers of navigation.
I began my process on paper, experimenting with different ways to represent the data I found. Once I settled on a few different ways to represent the data, I dug into Illustrator. I designed the color palette by pulling on colors from the cover of the issue. While I initially attempted to incorporate The New Yorker‘s branding into the piece, I settled on a font reminiscent of The New Yorker’s style, Neutra Text.
My small laptop screen only afforded me so much space to view the large poster, so I spent much time printing out full-size drafts for editing and peer review.
Solution
I made a poster. A very, very big poster. The final print measures eight feet long and three feet high. It was nerve racking committing such a large document to print (and my credit card) but it felt great to have a tangible piece. The poster features two sections: a comparison of content between the two artifacts and a comparison of navigation, which includes separate visualizations for the print and iPad navigation.
