As I have taught publication design courses over the last 25 years, the definition of “publication” has evolved in a variety of ways. First it was newspaper design, then a little bit of magazine design was added. Then, that grew into webzines, then digital magazines and eventually iPad magazines with interactive slideshows.
As the way the public has consumed visual, magazine-style content changed over the years, I’ve tried to adapt to those changes in my design courses within our journalism program. But while the definition of what a publication is has changed along with the methods of distribution, basic principles of design theory remain the same.
Whatever the traditional channel, visual storytelling will continue to transition to social media and the web.
Recently I spent some time reviewing the environment and seeing what was going on across a variety of social media channels in terms of “magazine-style content.” This included everything from Visual Investigations at the New York Times, to visual-driven Twitter threads, to Instazines from Nike and others.
After reviewing these and other innovations, my visual journalism students and I decided settled on Instagram magazines for their capstone projects.
A hashtag search for #instazine on Instagram will reveal a variety of styles and approaches: Some try to look like mini-versions of traditional magazines while others look more like multipage social media posts.
The key to this approach is the Instagram slideshow function where you are able to create a 10-page experience utilizing images and videos, which feels somewhat interactive and fluid.
Working with visual journalism students who could shoot photos, shoot and edit video, write, animate and design, we took a broad and creative approach these projects. Below are several links to examples from the class. (Note: WordPress will embed IG slide shows at this time.)
I originally thought the students would do more feature-oriented topics but several did more serious topics. We also had to deal with the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic. So for example one of these projects was about the student’s brother, which we would not allow under normal conditions.
Another note here is one really doesn’t get the full Instazine experience unless you’re in the actual Instagram app because via web browsers (like you are probably experiencing this) you actually have to hit the play button for each page to start, whereas when you’re in the Instagram app each page starts automatically. This includes Facebook links to Instagram as well. Thus, when you are in the Instagram app it seamlessly flows from one slide to the next so you get more of a fluid experience. I would recommend going to @listazine via the Instagram app for the real experience.
Takeaways from this experience:
• Students are excited about taking on innovative approaches to journalism and visual storytelling. Their skill sets expanded traditional story design to animations within Photoshop or After Effects and so forth.
• Hard news topics are difficult to cover due to the limited amount of text. It’s difficult to cover more cognitive topics or build a full narrative in 350 words. In the future we will probably do even more visual or feature-oriented topics.
• There are many ways to meet the outcomes of a design class within a journalism program. We were able to combine visual design and improved narrative storytelling within a social media environment.
We may do something completely different this semester; my current students and I are scanning the environment as of this writing. We are also in the process of finalizing several of these for publication within our student news lab, The Universe.
