http://www.79nm.com/2012/01/the-future-of-print-begins-with-the-ipad/
Bruce Bell of Adobe leads the way with Wired…and Martha Stewart
What happens when Wired, the most recognized magazine in the digital world, comes together with today’s most revolutionary device — the iPad? And what happens when Martha Stewart Living goes digital? We asked Bruce Bell. He is the consummate designer, strategic thinker, and visionary whose team has headed the collaboration on the creation and launch of the world’s most talked about digital magazines. Bell’s work for these iconic brands is a story of collaboration, about breakthrough design and about technical virtuosity — an Academy alum who is working way beyond the leading edge and redefining our world.
AAU: Is this the beginning of the end for the printed page?
Bell: In the past couple of years we’ve hear a lot of rumors that print is dying. I’m not sure anybody really believes that, and I don’t believe it either. But I think what people are realizing is that there are new opportunities to present content.
AAU: How is Adobe changing the world of publication design?
Bell: Adobe is enabling print designers to create digital magazines and applications without having to write a line of code. That was our biggest win. Our ultimate goal was to get magazine publishers to go digital without having to create new workflows for what they do because of staffing and budgetary concerns. For the first time, print designers can create interactive publications without having to bring in web designers or developers.
AAU: What impact is all of this having on Adobe’s Creative Suite?
Bell: The biggest changes are happening with InDesign, and the interactive capabilities being built into it. The most significant thing happening is that Adobe is embracing HTML and viewing it as another viable platform to publish to from our creative tools. HTML is incorporated into Adobe’s new file format, .folio, which was born from the magazine effort.
AAU: How else are these publishing tools being used?
Bell: Other organizations, like TED Conferences, for one, are using our platform for their conference programs. The advantage is that anybody can download the program for free, and it’s cheaper for the conference organizers to produce and it can also act as a widely-distributed marketing piece. It also opens up many possibilities, such as with social networking and note taking.
Catalogs are another medium that are quickly going digital. With one tap, the customer can access your point of purchase. It’s a huge advantage.
AAU: Is the Adobe platform the same for the iPad and all other tablets?
Bell: Our platform can deploy to any device. We think of the iPad first, of course, because it’s superior in user experience and the most widely adopted tablet by the market segment, but we feel it’s very important to support Android, PlayBook, and other tablet devices because the adoption trajectory shows healthy competition. Right now, Android has actually surpassed the iPhone in terms of market penetration for smartphones. Samsung and other companies are just as important.
AAU: What is your role in leading this development process at Adobe?
Bell: I’m an experience designer and the managing design lead of the Customer Engagements team at Adobe. Adobe has about 120 people working in XD (the experience design group) around the world – working on established consumer products like Photoshop and Illustrator, and seeding new 1.0 products as demand arises. Customer Engagements is a unique team of 16 people, both designers and developers, within the XD group. We’re out in the field working with customers and defining new products. We spent a year of our time working with Wired on the pilot for the launch of their digital magazine. At launch, we were well on our way to having a real product for the market and we handed it off to another team within Adobe for further development. We also worked on the digital launch of Martha Stewart Living and The New Yorker during the initial development process.
AAU: What was it about those three launches – Wired, Martha Stewart Living, and The New Yorker – that brought these new tools out the testing stage?
Bell: I think of it in terms of the design fidelity spectrum. On the far left, you have feed-based publishing which is a basic presentation of text and images. At the right of the spectrum, you are trying to achieve things that cannot yet be done in feed-based design.
The projects we worked on were all on the right side of the design spectrum – all of them highly designed, but in different ways.
By the time we worked with these and other clients, we felt that we had gained insight into the problems that most publishers would face. At least 80/20, you know.
AAU: What was it like to work with Wired magazine?
Bell: Working with Scott Dadich on Wired was an amazing experience; he is one of the true visionaries of publishing. We worked together for nine months crafting various kinds of authoring tools. It was because of Scott that we were able to succeed.
AAU: How did Martha Stewart Living differ from Wired, in terms of the design and production process?
Bell: We worked directly with Martha Stewart and Gael Towey, the Chief Creative and Editorial Director for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. We also worked closely with Eric Pike, creative director of Martha Stewart Living magazine. They were all thinking about their content network as a whole, and all the other types of media they use beside magazines. One thing that was really important to Martha Stewart was the format of the recipes. She wanted the recipes to appear within one panel, with only one scroll required, so people wouldn’t get their iPads messy while working in the kitchen. The end result ended up being the base template for the entire Everyday Food digital edition.
AAU: Are there any other clients you’ve worked with that you’d like to mention?
We consulted for TED conferences on the launch of their digital program guide. TED is an awesome organization – at this point what they do is a service to the world. I’ve also worked with the New York Times, MTV, and Major League Baseball. We’ve created a lot of strong partnerships. In every case, we’ve worked with them to see what end user problem needs to be solved.
AAU: Now that hundreds of publishers are using the Adobe platform, what’s happening in the industry as a whole?
Bell: The lines between media are getting blurry. We need to think about how to design around the content: what are people consuming, how are they consuming it, and how to best deliver content to them. As content evolves, the real question is: what do these networks look like?
About Bruce Bell:
Bell is a multidisciplinary designer living in New York City. He is currently leading design for the Customer Engagements team at Adobe Systems, which works with strategic partners in the creation of 1.0, next-generation, multi-platform digital solutions. His work in the field validates real world use-cases and informs product definition and features for future and current point releases.
Prior to joining Adobe, Bell was Design Director at Method, Inc., a brand experience and digital design firm in San Francisco, New York, and London. Bell joined Method’s creative team in 2003, and while at Method designed business-critical interactive applications, global branding and packaging systems, and data-rich print collateral for organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Bruce’s background includes environmental, experiential, and stage lighting design, brand and corporate identity design, and digital product development. He has worked in markets across the United States, Asia, and Europe, and has spoken at design and technology conferences around the world.
Bruce holds a BFA in Graphic Design From the Academy of Art University and has received numerous awards: a Clio for a product and packaging program for Knoll; a One Show Golden Pencil for an interactive educational kiosk for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, multiple Webby awards including Best Page-Level Information Architecture and Best Visual Design in Function for TED.com, and recognition from numerous publications such as Communication Arts, How Magazine, ID Magazine and Print Magazine. He is a contributing artist and a contributing technologist to Wired magazine and has been published by the Typography Directors Club.
Story written by Mindy Smart for AJournal Issue Eight, Summer 2011
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