The New York Times’ T Magazine Flows
A.MA.ZING.
Not only reputable in bringing some pretty compelling articles on Fashion, The New York Times have acknowledged and expanded their style section into the newly baptized “T“.
On the front cover: Natalie Portman
Combining the classic New York Times design with a serif font for text, and using the bold gothic lettering as its logo, T renders the online experience a little sassier than most online fashion magazines. It doesn’t use flipping pages, nor does it compact information in several columns, but flows horizontally echoing the scrolling headline ticker (!!) of their new blog “The Moment” on the bottom .
Ads are effectively placed where they are dominant as the single ad on the page you’re reading, like a full page ad in a magazine. This allows us to keep reading the article without being overwhelmed by a barrage of ads flanked left and right, in different sizes and disruptive of the reading flow.
Editorial photoshoots are transformed into a slide show, scrolling by hovering over the arrow on the right or left of the screen.
What’s fun about T Magazine is that each article is an experience in itself. The articles aren’t just confined to horizontal scrolling, some allow vertical, some allow viewings in all directions. Instead of telling you what you should be looking at, T lets you choose. You’re in control of what you want to read, how you want to read it and how fast. My biggest (and perhaps envious) pro of this site is the scrolling news ticker. Who doesn’t want to see constant headlines about fashion? I mean come on! It’s brilliant!
“The Moment” has earned a spot in the RSS Feed section. Enjoy and do check out the site!
Taking it On At The Flip-Zone
Traipsing across Facebook, among the many advertising “comments” in the Montreal Fashion group, one site caught my eye called “Flip-Zone,” a new online fashion magazine.
Based in Paris, this online fashion site opened is doors just last week. With over 250 collections to browse through, Flip-Zone has made considerable progress where other online fashion magazines may lack. True to its name, it’s a website full of “flippable” pages (it looks like there’s an epidemic of flipping websites), not only that, we’re also allowed to zoom in each image, send it to a friend, click on an ad page and brought to their landing page, you can even create your own flipbooks to share with friends.
Montreal’s high end swimwear brand Aqua Di Lara’s flipbook.
The magazine also focuses on numerous non-popular (but still posh) designers in a variety of different fashion arenas such as wedding dresses, lingerie, accessories, bathing suits and sportswear. With a brief fashion profile intro on the first page, each flipbook contains only editorials (many of them runway shots) available in high quality.
Flip-Zone is optimized truly for the websurfer’s confort and joy by making their website available in different screen resolutions. From 1024×768 to 1600×1050, this is what digital fashion should be all about. High resolution for high fashion, as it was meant to be.
Sorry English-natives, the site is French-only. But they’re still in Beta, so who knows, maybe they’ll be able to afford to translate it one day.
Eye Candy, The Volumes Launch
According to today’s The Gazette, a new kind of fashion magazine has been lauched during the L’Oréal Fashion Week last month called “Eye Candy, The Volumes” or “Voyeur de la Mode” by Eye Candy Media, a UK-based advertising giant screen company . The new publication will be based in Montreal and will not feature any written articles but simply a collection of fashion editorial spreads by the world’s most talented fashion photographers.
A page from the October issue with a peek of the next page. Notice the video screen up on the right page.
Their website contains an online version of the magazine where visitors can flip through the pages like a real magazine, sometimes containing videos. The first time I’ve seen this page flipping animation done was on Clear Magazine’s website (though it’s been under reconstruction for ages). The whole feeling is very reminiscent of Iconique’s fashion editorials, a fashion magazine which publishes exclusively on the web, integrating Flash to interact with the user. It’s not surprising though as Montreal’s own Yanick Déry has collaborated with Iconique before and may have influenced publishers in spinning off a fashion publication with a similar chicness of a black background and editorial concept.
It’s a great breath of fresh air when it comes to Montreal fashion publications, I’m sure I’ll be picking up my copy soon. However, the concept is hardly anything new. Perhaps you can call me a cynical fashion lover, but when it comes to fashion publications, after getting a taste of Clear, Iconique, Another Magazine, and IssueOne, I’m sort of waiting for something a little more different.
