For some time, I’ve been meaning to write about Dustin Curtis and the evolution of magazine content online. This article on nettuts+, “Bringing the Magazine to the Web,” a roundup of the most impressive convergences of design and editorial content, is as good a place to start as any.
It’s clear that news content on sites like cnn, msnbc, and the like is a numbers game, whoever generates the most content with the most amount of content “wins.” They’re competing for ad revenue against such power players as Google, Yahoo! and AOL, who’ve perfected the use of content farms to game SEO. Point being: Design on editorial sites has been dictated by the use of cookie cutter templates. How else can they produce a lot of content in a small amount of time?
The designers in this roundup who treat their blog posts like content in a magazine, who actually invest time in the design and production of each individual piece of content, giving the writing its due, represent the true future of quality editorial content online. Producing quality editorial content cannot be a numbers game. You will lose against the Googles of this world every time. It has to be about creating a pleasurable, surprising and unique reading experience. That’s how you create real demand.
