Disposiciones generales - Definición y alcance del pliego:

Isn’t it fascinating to consider how the old journalism phrase “above the fold” has evolved? Once it literally meant “above the fold” of a traditional broadsheet

newspaper. Editors, writers and designers battled over what, and who, would win a coveted spot above that fold, where the most reader eyeballs would land.

Now, even as those broadsheets themselves are in decline, heading for dinosaur status, the phrase still lives – in tablet publishing.

Of course tablets have no fold. But they do have a single screen, and for

magazines employing the Mequoda Best Practice of vertical reflow, “above the fold” – that is, the first screen – has become once again a layout consideration.

Vertical reflow, also known as vertical swipe, to describe how the user accesses the content, means a layout where instead of squeezing a magazine page into the smaller tablet screen, the content is resized and reflowed on a bottomless tablet page. Users swipe up to bring up this long page as they read. The reader can swipe horizontally at any point on this page to go to the next article.

Mequoda prefers this layout because it’s reader-friendly; even young folks can have trouble reading content that’s squeezed down from magazine size to tablet size if you don’t reflow your content.

And the growing popularity of this layout has led to new design considerations – what should you put on that first screen, above the “fold?”

Designing above the fold for the iPad

What with 62% of the market owning a full-sized iPad, I’m focusing only on designing for that specific device. When you employ vertical reflow, you don’t have to worry about responsive design, because the content’s already laid out to be easily viewed on that iPad screen.

And just as in the newspaper days when editors chose content to go above the fold that would keep their readers engaged and coming back every day, iPad content designers have to consider how to do the same. You don’t want your subscribers or single-issue buyers yawning and scrolling straight through your magazine.

Those readers won’t be renewing, or buying a subscription, if they’re not captured by your content in the first few seconds on each page. And it’s certainly a waste of

resources if you’re spending time and money to reflow your content without taking reader engagement into consideration.

So how to get readers’ attention and keep it? At the moment, there are several different design options popping up out there.

1. Use a big, provocative headline

This is fairly common. For example, New York magazine, one of our tablet

favorites, does this for every feature it publishes. This is gratifying yet challenging for writers, and reminiscent of the days of 19^th-century journalism where big fat headlines were the only tools newspapers had to get readers’ attention.

In fact, the headline for one article in a recent issue was created in a font that could have been ripped directly from one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, circa 1899.

2. Feature a compelling image.

Again, fairly common. The right image can really have an impact on a reader casually scrolling through a digital magazine. In practice, an image completely alone looks like an ad, so all of the designs with prominent images I found have at least a small headline included to indicate that it’s editorial content. Wired does this for most of its features.

(In an interesting enhancement, Popular Science lets you double-tap the screen to make the headline and any text disappear, and enjoy the lead image all by itself.)

3. Start with an engaging video.

Though video is something that consumers expect in their tablet magazines, this is harder to find in practice. Popular Science, ever the leader, delivers. An article on a vertical veggie farm opens with a woman talking about her work and video of the farm’s produce flowing in behind her.

4. Combine a compelling image with moveable text.

This is a technological offering that our partner, Mag+, is excited about. “Layering”

allows the designer to feature a stationary image and have the corresponding text be scrollable. Mental Floss does this particularly well. In fact, it even offers a compelling image above the fold, which, as the text scrolls into view, fades gradually until the screen shows all text.

I don’t know how much this contributes to reader engagement in the traditional sense, but it certainly makes you want to find out what other technological bells and whistles Mental Floss will come up with!

5. Do nothing special, but at least make sure there’s a great image above the fold.

This is how most regular departments are handled by the reflowed magazines I surveyed. The design is really just a resized version of the print magazine page.

And we can’t expect blockbuster, knock-your-socks off design for every single lead page – it’s just not a practical use of resources.

Of course designers being designers, we may soon see other “above the fold”

offerings that we haven’t seen yet or even thought of. That’s the beautiful thing about tablet magazine publishing!

Digital Magazine Best Practices in