How to Make a Digital Magazine Online

Too often, digital magazines are seen only as an opportunity to reproduce a print medium on a screen. Swiping on an iPad is different from leafing through a copy of Vogue, and brands should leverage engaging new platforms. By embracing digital content creation and consumption, you can expand your audience and keep them coming back for more. Related: 5 ways to monetize your online magazine You can design your own cutting-edge publication with the right software. This article will use Lucidpress's digital magazine template as an example. Here are some of the major points to keep in mind when producing long-form digital content. 1. Make the page-turning experience smooth In Lucidpress, published digital magazines come with navigation hints. On a tablet, you swipe to turn the page—great for tactile learners. On a computer, navigate with the right and left arrow keys, or click and drag. 2. Create a compelling background image Printing full-page photos is expensive, but they don't cost anything extra in a digital format. To set your digital magazine's background as an image, select Page Settings & Page Fill. Under Fill, choose Image from the menu. This will bring up the Image Manager, where you choose images uploaded from your computer or imported from Flickr, Facebook or Dropbox accounts. Then, create a template from the page you made. Good content is not enough if the final product isn't visually appealing. 3. Embed attractive image galleries & videos In digital, you're not limited to a single image, so why not embed a photo collection in your magazine? We've seen some very compelling photo essays in Lucidpress docs; create your own by selecting the Image Gallery button. Choose up to 15 images to add to your gallery. Readers scroll through your images by clicking on the arrow guides or swiping on a tablet. Rather than being forced to choose just one photo of your latest project or event, imagine being able to paint a more full picture with an immersive gallery. Lucidpress puts the power of video into the average user's hands. To add video content, upload your content to YouTube first. (You can choose whether it is publicly or privately listed there.) Copy the video's URL and paste it into the field when you drag your video onto the canvas. This means you can appeal to more of your readers' senses—sight and sound—at once. 4. Drive traffic to your site with links If you're a small business owner with a storefront on a commercial site, add links to your products so your customers can purchase with one click. A digital portfolio becomes more compelling with a link to your social media profile and email address. These options are much less likely to be thrown away than junk mail. Business and non-profits benefit from the ability to link to their homepage, social media feeds, or email addresses directly from their newsletters. In Lucidpress, interactivity mode is where you add interactive elements like linking to external sites, email addresses or another page in your document. You control which elements you want to be interactive. Read this tutorial for direction on how to use linking in Lucidpress. 5. Add your brand logo & colors A strong sense of branding will help your long-form content stand out. To add your logo to your digital magazine, simply upload it to Lucidpress's magazine maker and drag it onto your canvas. With digital product promotion, the gap between the consumer and the producer is narrowing—it's easier than ever to reach your audience. Color has a strong effect on emotion. Adding custom colors to your magazine will help your readers identify your brand right away. Let's say you want to include a light lavender, hexadecimal value 786C8F, in your magazine. Simply change the color of text, shapes, lines, borders & backgrounds with the click of a button. Lucidpress also supports RGB and CMYK values found in the color picker. The days of black-and-white newsprint are long past. 6. Decrease load time and increase mobile friendliness Your audience will be more likely to remain captivated if they aren't interrupted by slow loading times. Lucidpress is optimized to be highly responsive and provides an ideal viewing platform for desktops and tablets. Make sure that your digital magazine platform is doing the heavy lifting on the back-end so that readers have a seamlessly interactive experience. Build your publication with mobile viewers in mind. The digital templates in Lucidpress are sized perfectly for viewing on tablets and mobile phones. 7. Redefine content creation The keyword to embracing long-form digital content is interactivity. Direct links to external sites, email addresses, immersive photo galleries and video are all features unique to digital magazines that cannot be reproduced on paper. To be at the forefront of your industry, examine your approach to long-form content like digital magazines, newsletters and reports. One publication with a storied history, La Presse, has proven that it understands the benefits of digital. Lucidpress worked with the brand to develop La Presse+, a hugely successful iPad app among French-Canadian readers. Rather than trying to exactly recreate a print broadsheet, La Presse adapted their content to the new medium. For instance, their advertisements are interactive and fun. One La Presse+ ad lets you try on different outfits and view the total cost of your outfit dynamically—then it's one click to buy. La Presse+ is a five-star app built on Lucidpress's core technology. The team at La Presse is redefining digital journalism. With a design tool like Lucidpress, you can also redefine how your customers interact with your brand and tell your brand's story in ways that were impossible even a few years ago. Ready to make your own digital magazine? These free magazine templates are a great starting point.