Adobe Shines Spotlight on JZD

June 25, 2013 / Joe Zeff

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Adobe shines its spotlight on Joe Zeff Design today, promoting a series of higher education events featuring company president Joe Zeff, an Adobe TV episode about the studio, and an extended post on its digital publishing blog about how JZD is rethinking how universities interact with students, faculty and alumni.

Joe will partner with Adobe's higher education team to help universities better understand their potential to be transformative through Digital Publishing Suite. He will draw on the studio's experience in developing apps for UCLA Anderson School of Management, the University of Notre Dame and Maryland Institute College of Art. The event in Baltimore is scheduled for July 23, and registration is required.

Meanwhile, Adobe showcases Joe Zeff Design in a two-minute film on Adobe TV titled Everybody Has A Story, taking viewers behind the scenes at our church-turned-studio in Montclair, NJ, as JZD closes an issue of Fast Company for iPad. Joe talks about the benefits of Digital Publishing Suite and how it helps the studio focus on storytelling without the constraints of complicated code.

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Adobe Creative Cloud & You

May 27, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff will be on stage at a Society of Publication Designers event next month in New York City to help designers better understand Adobe's new Creative Cloud offering.

Adobe Worldwide Design Evangelist Terry White will present an overview of Creative Cloud, which replaces the company's Creative Suite and requires customers to pay a monthly subscription fee to use applications like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

More than 500,000 people have already signed up for Creative Cloud, and Adobe expects more than 1.2 million subscribers by the end of the year. As part of their fee, subscribers gain access to new collaboration tools, unlimited Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition apps, and more than a thousand fonts for the web and desktop.

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A Better Fast Company App

May 09, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Over the past year we've worked with Fast Company magazine to design and develop an iPad edition that embodies the spirit of its brand — bold, innovative and forward-thinking. The app is one of six finalists for App of the Year in the Society of Publication Designers competition tomorrow night in New York City.

We updated the app yesterday with an improved storefront that takes a slightly different approach than other digital magazines. Many publishers have overhauled their storefronts to make them more dynamic, adding news feeds and new products to their galleries. New York magazine is a noteworthy example, having creating a bunkbed-like storefront with web content on the top and issues on the bottom.

We too see the potential of adding functionality to the storefront. Bonus features make the app more usable, and more likely that the app will become part of consumers' daily routines. But we disagree with the approach that many publishers have taken, cluttering their storefronts with Twitter feeds and other elements that make it harder for consumers to find their magazines.

After all, that's the reason they visit the storefront in the first place.

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Adobe MAX: A Report

May 07, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Adobe offers up new tools and new toys at its Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles this week. Here's the latest, and how it impacts designers:

• If you're waiting for Creative Suite 7, wait no more, as there won't be one. Adobe has officially discontinued selling boxed software, and will serve applications exclusively through Creative Cloud beginning this summer. That means that individuals will pay a monthly subscription fee for access to all of Adobe's applications and cloud-based services, which have expanded over the past year to include access to thousands of web and desktop fonts through TypeKit.

(It also means that eventually everyone will use the same version of InDesign, as it will be magically updated from the cloud. It will be interesting to see how Creative Cloud is deployed in large media companies, which typically linger a version or two behind because of compatibility issues with other workflow tools.)

• Adobe is trying its hand at making hardware, too. Some of their first efforts, still in prototype: a digital stylus that can access your Creative Cloud preferences for brushstroke, color palettes and clipboard; a digital ruler that helps you draw straight lines, curves and other shapes; and a system of connected touchscreens intended to replace your magazine's viewing wall with a Minority Report-like experience.

WIRED design director Claudia de Almeida helped demo the touchscreens, codenamed Project Context, by flipping pages across the stage from one screen to the other, and showing how print and tablet layouts could be digitally annotated and viewed side-by-side.

• One of the cooler applications Adobe showed was Kuler for iPhone. Kuler is a tool that helps you create, manage and share color palettes, and now you can extract color from the real world. Point your iPhone at anything, choose the colors you like, save the palette to the Creative Cloud, import that palette into your favorite Adobe application, and you're done. Here's a video.

• Digital Publishing Suite continues to soar, with 2 million digital magazines downloaded every week. Sessions at MAX have focused on extending DPS to meet the needs of non-publishing clients, creating new opportunities outside of magazines for graphic designers. We've enjoyed spending time with clients, colleagues and others interested in our services.

Creative Cloud membership also includes Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition, so anyone who has access to InDesign CC can make standalone apps for the iPad. There are also new collaboration tools that allow users to share files via the cloud, replacing services like Dropbox with smart functionality that lets you view InDesign files, color palettes and font lists online without having to download files.

• And more: There's a gyroscope-enabled panorama of the main venue from Joe Zeff Design for those unable to make the trip to Los Angeles. For those who want to go deeper into the new features of Creative Cloud, Adobe has published a set of videos here.

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JZD at Adobe MAX . . . and beyond

May 02, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff Design and its clients will be showcased during several Adobe events over the next two weeks that we're excited to announce.

President Joe Zeff will present at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles on Monday, May 6 in a session focused on studios that are pushing the boundaries of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) to provide solutions for non-publishers. Register for Adobe MAX here and sign up for our session here — registration is limited, and we can only fit so many bobbleheads in our luggage, so sign up today!

The following week, some of our clients will present apps that we've helped to create at the Adobe Digital Publishing Summit May 14-15 in New York City. The first day is focused on traditional publishing, with Declan Moore from National Geographic and Lynda Hammes from Foreign Affairs on stage. The following day addresses corporate publishing, with Johanna Cap from JPMorgan Chase and Tim O'Connor from Notre Dame presenting apps.

Register for the May 14 event here, and the May 15 event here. We'll be attending both days; reach out if you'd like to schedule a meeting.

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The Mutant Library

April 29, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff Design is proud to present its latest iPad app, a collaboration with the Maryland Institute College of Art that demonstrates the power of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite when placed in the hands of students without traditional publishing backgrounds.

"The Mutant Library" showcases the work of 14 graduate students in MICA's Graphic Design program. Krissi Xenakis, an art director at Joe Zeff Design who received her MFA in Graphic Design from the school, returned to her alma mater for a weekend in March to present a workshop on digital publishing. After she returned to work Monday and showed her colleagues what the students had done, we immediately reached out to the university to find a way to share with the entire design community.

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Panoramic Photography on the iPad

April 12, 2013 / Joe Zeff

You've seen panoramic photography on real estate websites, Google Street View, and your own iPhone. Now it's coming to your iPad, infused with hotspots, audio, video, 3D renderings and other media that make the best storytelling device ever made even more effective.

Our new iPad app, an interactive tour of our church-turned-studio called The People in the Steeple, showcases panoramic photography as a way to deliver content that lets users experience it rather than simply reading and looking. We developed the app using a combination of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and custom HTML programming. It's free, and available here.

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Updated: New York Magazine's New iPad App

April 01, 2013 / Joe Zeff

New York magazine rolled out its new iPad app today, and one reviewer went so far as to describe it as "the future of print + digital publishing."

We don't think so.

Don't get us wrong, New York magazine for iPad is quite good. It is well-designed, with lots and lots of extras: audio clips, video clips, and layers of content. The print content has been thoughtfully redesigned for the tablet edition, which runs on the Mag+ platform. Not only is the editorial content enhanced, so is the advertising: a Macy's ad comes to life on the screen with autoplaying video, drag-and-drop outfits, and shortcuts to the online store. All in all, New York Media and The Wonderfactory did a terrific job.

The app, however, is another story.

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In Dublin, A Celebration of Old and New

March 21, 2013 / Joe Zeff

It was a celebration of old and new at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin last evening, where hundreds of dignitaries filled the 123-year-old museum housing many of Ireland's prized antiquities to formally launch A HIstory of Ireland in 100 Objects, a newspaper-series-turned-coffee-table-book-turned-app that we developed in cooperation with the Royal Irish Academy and Adobe.

Past, present and future converged for a night. Artifacts as old as 5,000 B.C., presented on tablet devices that didn't exist three years ago. A series of newspaper articles from The Irish Times resurrected first as a book, and then as multimedia-packed apps for iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire and Android tablets. Seventy-three-year-old Irish poet Seamus Heaney, recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature and the guest speaker for the event, singling out Joe Zeff Design by name and then acknowledging that he doesn't understand what an app even is.

We'll try to explain.

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The New New York Times

March 14, 2013 / Joe Zeff

The New York Times' prototype of its redesigned website raises fundamental questions about the merits of distributing content through websites versus apps. If you haven't yet seen the demo, it's available here.

The new website looks like a tablet app, functions like a tablet app, but isn't a tablet app — it's an HTML-based site available to any viewer on any device without downloading anything at all from any app store. For The New York Times, there's no need to submit anything to Apple or anyone else for approval, and no need to share revenues with Apple or anyone else. So far, so good.

The look and feel is clearly inspired by other HTML-based experiments in long-form storytelling. ESPN set the standard last fall with an Outside The Lines feature on Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis. As you scroll down the webpage, photographs and illustrations appear alongside the corresponding text, using a parallax scrolling technique. The New York Times upped the ante with its Snow Fall project last December, adding animation to the recipe. Snow Fall was a hit, drawing nearly a million unique visitors in the first week.

Neither experiment worked as well as tablets as they did on desktops, but it's a matter of time before they do. So why bother creating tablet apps using platforms like Adobe Digital Publishing Suite when websites can be so tablet-friendly? We'd argue that these are the reasons why:

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"A Gift from Ireland to the World"

March 12, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, Joe Zeff Design is excited to announce that A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, our collaboration with the Royal Irish Academy, is available for iPhone, iPad, Kindle and most Android tablets.

The Royal Irish Academy is Ireland's academy for the sciences, humanities and social sciences, and membership to the Academy is the highest academic honor in that country. The apps are a culmination of a multiyear project involving the Academy, the National Museum of Ireland and The Irish Times. Other partners include the EU Presidency, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Adobe.

The apps are being presented by the Irish government as "a gift from the people of Ireland to the people of the world to mark Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union," and are offered without charge until the end of the month. Here's a video preview:

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The Final Hours of Tomb Raider

March 05, 2013 / Joe Zeff

The Final Hours of Tomb Raider is available starting today for iPad, Kindle Fire and desktop computers, setting a new standard for how storytelling comes to life in a tablet application.

Once again we've collaborated with journalist Geoff Keighley to tell the story behind a blockbuster video game, in this case Tomb Raider, which launches today with versions for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Windows computers. Our app immediately caught the attention of Entertainment Weekly, which featured it on its website yesterday and said that it was "beautifully designed."

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Kids Discover: Making Learning Fun

January 22, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff Design is excited to announce that Volumes 1 through 5 of Kids Discover are now available in the iTunes App Store, packed with interactivity that makes science and social studies fun for children of all ages.

The newest releases are standalone apps about Galaxies, Antarctica, Washington, D.C., Cells and Extreme Weather. Galaxies is available free; the others are $2.99. And we're hard at work on more volumes, each designed and developed using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to combine text, photos, video, animations, interactive 3D models, quizzes and activities into one seamless multimedia experience.

Our new promotional video shows how Kids Discover outshines other educational apps. Have a look . . .

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Gideon's Army Seizes Sundance

January 22, 2013 / Joe Zeff

Congratulations to filmmaker Dawn Porter and her team at Trilogy Films for their exciting premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where Gideon's Army has opened to standing ovations and rave reviews.

Gideon's Army is a documentary about the challenges facing public defenders 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright, which requires courts to provide counsel for defendants unable to pay for their own attorneys. Porter sheds light on an overburdened system, with 15,000 public defenders handling a million cases a year.

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Post-Game Analysis: Notre Dame Gameday for iPad

January 08, 2013 / Joe Zeff

We've had the good fortune of working with the University of Notre Dame and Adobe on Notre Dame Gameday, an impromptu digital magazine for iPad built around the BCS National Championship game played last night in Miami.

While Notre Dame's season ended abruptly last night, the conversation about interactive gameday programs for major universities is just getting started. We've been contacted by a slew of universities about developing similar products, both as one-off publications and weekly editions. It may be that the next revolution in digital publishing takes hold in college athletics departments nationwide.

What we're telling prospective clients considering products like Notre Dame Gameday:

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A BCS Championship App for Notre Dame

December 20, 2012 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff Design is excited to announce that Notre Dame Gameday, an interactive gameday program for the BCS National Championship Game we developed for the University of Notre Dame, is now available in the iTunes App Store.

Notre Dame Gameday takes fans behind the scenes with the No. 1-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish, recounting the highlights of their climb to the top of the BCS rankings and previewing their January 7 matchup against No. 2 Alabama, the defending national champions. The free iPad app features game-by-game recaps of the team's 12-0 season, photo and video galleries, statistical analyses, interactive rosters, animated lineups, stadium diagrams — even a virtual tailgate party.

We designed and developed the app in less than two weeks using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Instead of reformatting a print edition, we created an experience exclusively for iPad. The rosters are sortable to display players by name, number or position. The starting lineups are depicted as 3D-rendered characters that animate into place. There are video highlights from every game this season, taking fans inside the locker room and onto the gridiron with the Irish.

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In Defense of Tablet Publishing

December 06, 2012 / Joe Zeff

The death of The Daily has called into question the viability of iPad apps as a way to deliver magazine content. "Tablets in general, and the iPad in particular, are actually much less powerful and revolutionary than many of us had hoped," writes Felix Salmon of Reuters. "Turds all around," adds MG Siegler of TechCrunch.

Has digital publishing on iPad jumped the shark?

Not if done right.

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An App for Children of all Ages

December 06, 2012 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff Design is excited to announce that its most ambitious iPad app yet, Kids Discover, is available today in the iTunes App Store.

We've developed an interactive magazine for children that blows the doors off the competition. Kids Discover is a monthly iPad app bursting at the seams with original content — text, animation, pictures and activities. The app teaches kids about a different subject every month, with new installments sold individually or by subscription. There is no advertising whatsoever, ensuring that parents and children can experience Kids Discover without distractions.

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An App for UCLA that Means Business

December 03, 2012 / Joe Zeff

Joe Zeff Design is excited to announce that Assets Digital, an iPad app we developed for UCLA Anderson School of Management, is now available for download in the iTunes App Store.

The app represents an exciting new way for one of the country's top business schools to engage with its alumni. Traditionally, universities have published alumni magazines that were distributed by mail to a list of graduates. Assets Digital changes the game by reaching beyond that list of 36,000 alumni to access current students, prospective students, faculty, media and anyone interested in business, culture and technology, anywhere in the world — a potential audience of 85 million iPad users.

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Some Good News . . . iPad Mini

November 02, 2012 / Joe Zeff Design

It's been a harrowing week for the New York City region, for certain. Most people have no electricity or heat. There are mile-long queues at gasoline stations. Supplies are increasingly scarce. But there is some good news, a glimmer of hope for those at Joe Zeff Design, app developers and publishers everywhere.

The iPad Mini. It makes magazines smaller. And their potential audiences bigger.

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