As previously covered at Fueled, magazines and retail companies are expanding and tailoring their presence to suit the ever-growing digital market. DEPESHA, a culture magazine at the intersection of fashion, art, and literature, has also adapted to the age of the iPad by creating an aesthetically-impressive digital platform that approximates and captures the look of your standard, glossy print magazine. The exception in going digital, of course, is that readers can now more easily access content, while publishers can more easily tap into profits.

Incentive And Perspective

Online marketing is incredibly pervasive; a point Stephan Rabimov, publisher and editor of DEPESHA, recently emphasized at the beginning of his “Breaking the Stereotypes” presentation at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology. After noticing more than 140 blogs from around the world posted a simple photo from a runway show on DEPESHA’s page, it became clear that the digital arena would be the perfect place for increasing recognition and traffic. While print magazines will not necessarily be replaced, they will definitely be transformed by Internet, iPad, and Android technologies. It is essential, according to Rabimov, to establish presence across all platforms with a keenness for tailoring design and content specifically to each.

According to PaidContent’s brief report on IDG Connect statistics, iPad owners are buying less physical media and instead stocking up on their digital counterparts. The Association of Magazine Publishers reports, “Magazines rank in the top 10-percent of retail category revenue, generating over $4.5-billion annually.” The migration to the iPad and other tablets is therefore essential and, in fact, entails valuable benefits for the publishing industry. Publishers are still able to monetize their content while avoiding the costs that come along with printing and distribution associated with traditional print vehicles. For consumers, the convenience of portability and a few simple taps to magazine eye-candy is an obvious plus. The tactile experience of viewing magazine content on a tablet is even arguably comparable to having the physical version in hand.

Statistics And Perspective

Multiple sources indicate that consumers are accessing magazines electronically at an increasingly higher rate owing especially to the fact that added media, such as videos, extra photos, slide shows, audio, and flash animation, enhance their engagement experience. According to Magazine Media Factbook, 58-percent of tablet and e-reader users report reading more digital content than they ever thought they would. From the looks of it, consumers seem bound to purchase more digital media than they will print by 2014. And we must not forget that since the iPad was launched April 4, 2010, 55-million of them have been sold - a clear indication that the public is steadily and heavily intertwining this product into their daily routines.

Magazine media has been more than beckoned to oblige to the realities of these sales and, guilelessly put, Apple’s sales are of paramount importance when it comes to the digital interests of magazine publishers. Because DEPESHA thrives precisely on the brilliance and inspiration-provoking medium of art, especially in its visual form, building a mobile app is one of the best ways to give an extra bit of pathos, sparkle, and motion to the amazing content the magazine subsists on. DEPESHA’s presentation can now take on many forms, thus adding a wealth of possibility for showcasing fashion shows, exhibits, interviews, and much more through video and other means.

It is hard to think of a company more important to follow, as a magazine publisher, than Apple. Doing so allows you to expand and tighten your clutch on a wider demographic. Rabimov himself explained that the magazine’s ultimate intentions are to garner new subscribers, raise profile, and of course accumulate greater networking opportunities in the process - a plan that is extremely plausible given that the magazine garnered 14,000 followers on Twitter alone, by doing nothing but making themselves present on the popular social networking site. As Rabimov confidently states, “Consumers are hungry for fashion content." Now it's just a matter of developing more digital publications to deliver it to them quickly, easily, and originally.