For so long, blogging has dominated online publishing. Virtually every site which publishes content with any regularity displays posts in a date-ordered stream, no matter whether the content is news, social media updates, photos, or videos. It says a lot, also, that the world’s favourite CMS, WordPress, is designed, primarily, for blogging.
In many cases, the blog style of presentation works perfectly well, particularly when it comes to time-critical content. That said, it can hardly be the only worthwhile method of digital publishing – true creativity cannot be achieved if everyone has to use the same template.
ReadyMag is a new service which aims to fix this problem with a blank canvas, in the form of a digital magazine. Web based, but very mobile-friendly, this invite beta startup is hoping that, given the right tools, many of us will want to publish our content in a linear, self-contained format. But is print-shaped publishing really the next big thing in online content?
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The Network
Whilst magazine creation is the key feature here, let’s look at what ReadyMag offers us first – the Discover stream. This area is home to the most popular creations of other ReadyMag users.
ReadyMag’s Discover area is somewhat desolate, but the quality is high.
At present, the selection is relatively minimal – not entirely surprising, given the limited access ReadyMag is allowing to its beta – but there are enough publications on show to get an idea of what is possible with ReadyMag’s design suite.
The Discover area also provides ample opportunity to experience the service from the reader’s perspective. Each user has a vanity URL, home to a stylishly clean profile page which features all of that user’s creations. Click on one of the magazines, and you are taken through to the window-filling front cover. Navigation is arrow-based on desktop (white arrows are placed at the extreme sides of the browser window), and swipe-based on tablet. I found that magazines, particularly those with large images, took a little time to load, although the wait is not interminable.
Having read and studied many of the pre-existing publications on ReadyMag, I have to say that the format is impressive enough to be something I would consider using for my own writing or photography.
The Editor’s Desk
Okay, so enough with the gawping at other people’s work. It’s time to create something of my own.
Open the “Create” section of ReadyMag, and you are presented with a completely blank screen, with the exception of a dotted line which demarcates the area in which you can place content.
ReadyMag’s design area is a blank canvas (although templates are available)
All the action happens at the bottom-left of the browser window, where sit all of ReadyMag’s editing controls. The basics come first – an easy-access menu of your pages, undo and redo buttons, and a basic information pop-up which allows you to edit your title and add tags.
The grid and guide options in ReadyMag’s design area are extremely customizable.
ReadyMag does have some pretty neat tricks up its sleeve when it comes to formatting your creation, though. Pages can be set at a standard size, or be allowed to scroll downwards a set number of pixels. Equally, ReadyMag offers numerous grids and guides, each with snap-to functionality, making neat alignments a great deal easier. Even page backgrounds are highly customizable, with the option to fill the page with a solid colour, an image, or, very impressively, a video.
You can even fill your ReadyMag pages with videos.
The most important feature to be tested, though, is how ReadyMag deals with content. As you might expect, text is one of the options available, and, again, the accompanying feature-set is impressive. Text boxes, like all ReadyMag content, can easily be size-adjusted, and a good range of fonts is on offer. Along with standard formatting options, such as bold, strikethrough and italics, your text can include links. The biggest boon for writers here, however, is the option to split text into multiple columns.
Images can be uploaded directly, but ReadyMag also offers handy Instagram and Flickr importers, as well as built-in Google image search. Images can be pushed forwards, or to the back, and ReadyMag includes a very respectable selection of photo filters, as well as a cropping tool. The only, but significant, issue I can spot here is that you can’t make an image a clickable link, but this may be for reasons of reader usability.
Videos can also be added to your magazine, although only YouTube and Vimeo videos can be used, while Soundcloud is the only way of getting audio into your publication. Magazines can include shapes, too, the options being square, circular, triangular and a line.
The final content options are social media based. Both the Twitter and Facebook widgets are, essentially, the official embeddable offerings, with the only modifications being some small revisions to their style. This social aspect, though, is incredibly impressive, and a killer feature for ReadyMag, especially when you consider that you can include Facebook comments.
Publishing
You can be the best editor in the world, but it won’t mean a thing if no-one reads your creation. Hence, it makes sense to check out the ways in which your ReadyMag publications can be shared.
All of your magazines have their own public URL, which you can share wherever you like, but Twitter and Facebook sharing is built in to ReadyMag, as is direct emailing. There are a couple of more innovative options available, though. Any page on ReadyMag can be turned into a Pinterest-shareable preview image, and you can embed ReadyMag publications wherever you can include the HTML snippet. I can imagine folks basing whole websites around their ReadyMag creations.
Look – glorious columns of text!
It must also be noted that a planned feature is to be able to charge for access to magazines, opening up ReadyMag to be utilized effectively by professional content creators.
Conclusion
Magazine-building with ReadyMag is both easy and enjoyable. Critically, though, the magazines which you can create with this service genuinely work well, look good and are easily shareable. The ReadyMag network profiles are also nicely designed, and the upcoming ability to charge for magazines will provide the service with a new dimension.
There are areas for improvement, of course. The network is somewhat desolate at the moment, mostly due to the invitation-only nature of the beta. Equally, small omissions when it comes to building your masterpiece – no clickable images, no direct audio upload – are frustrating, but only when viewed through the prism of ReadyMag‘s general excellence.
The big question is, though, should you switch from blogging to ReadyMag publishing? Given its relatively early development stage, I’m not sure whether ReadyMag is refined enough to be a standalone way of publishing your content. As a supplement to more traditional web publishing, though, a ReadyMag publication is a brilliant way of sharing your content. Additionally, if development continues on this service, an increasing number of bloggers, photographers and other creative types may finally be tempted away from the decade-old blogging format – and quite rightly so.