Themed Issues

2016-08-01
by Ben Dimagmaliw
Blog

As the idea for a digital magazine continued to brew in my head, many concepts about its format and organization came to mind–too many actually. So I turned to established publications from entertainment magazines, lifestyle, fashion, and everything in between for reference. In terms of planning an issue, fashion and entertainment publications have the advantage of distinct seasons through which upcoming “products” can be introduced. Lifestyle and travel magazines can focus on a particular place, topic, or trend. But how does one go about organizing an interview magazine? It was too easy to get caught up in endless planning, but I had to forge ahead and begin actually conducting interviews. That had to take priority as a means of just putting the project in motion, but somehow tying together the interviewees remains an idea I hope to implement.
As a result of what I’ve experienced so far, the concept for the tenth issue came about quite organically…

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Learning To Walk

2016-06-17
by Ben Dimagmaliw
Blog
Learning to Walk

So, I’ve decided to make a magazine. Great! Now what?

Although I’ve done writing in my past, both in university to acquire my minor in English, I’ve not truly written any original long form articles, etc.; everything I’ve written in recent years have been text translated from Japanese. Moreover, personal writing or even maintaining a blog is quite different from actually publishing a magazine, digital or not.
One of the goals for the magazine is to offer a subscription plan to readers. If the subscription promises 4 issues per year (or quarterly releases), then you have to deliver. To do so, there were a few principles I have had to learn or improve upon.

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Why Not a Website

2016-06-03
by Ben Dimagmaliw
Blog
Website Or App

The web has become a means for sharing and consuming information. Many services exist to allow creators and readers to connect, from blogging platforms like WordPress, website creation platforms such as Squarespace, and even online publishing platforms such as Medium. With millions of people engaging in the world wide web on their computers and mobile devices, publishing on a website would seem the natural choice.

However, the web can be a distracting place. Many journalistic websites, no matter how professionsal or laymen, utilize sidebars or footers to showcase feeds from their social media sites. Others offer links to related articles either in the same areas or within the flow of the article itself. Enticing the reader to click on links is as much the intention of websites as reading the article, perhaps even more so depending on the publication. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the current internet.

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Why Not Print

2016-05-20
by Ben Dimagmaliw
Blog
Print or App

The question seems obvious. If the intention is to create a magazine, then why not a print magazine? Why a digital magazine? As much as I would admittedly like to publish a print magazine–my graphic design background almost screams for it–there are two reasons for choosing digital: practicality and economics.

Digital publishing involves primarily writing text then allowing the platform to set the text, photos, etc. into the a pre-determined layout. In the case of a blog, the layout can be customized either through themes or depending on one’s skill level, changing the parameters of editable elements through coding. Once the manner of presentation is determined, the user only ever has to write content.

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Letter to Jane

2016-05-15
by Ben Dimagmaliw
Blog
Letter to Jane Influence

If there was one publication which highly influenced my decision to create a digital magazine, it would be Timothy Paul Moore’s independently created art zine, Letter to Jane. It was (and is) the most compelling example of digital editorial design on the iPad.

As other publications rode the initial wave of excitement the iPad built for the future of digital publication–the realities of which I’ll leave for others to debate–Letter to Jane stood out from the rushed, scanned PDF magazines or the overtly complicated multimedia behemoths (in file size) which required instructions to use. Moore’s layouts were beautiful and austere. The themed apps, with their slightly different look and feel from issue-to-issue, conveyed a handcrafted quality as the physical zines of old.

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