Ever got stuck waiting at the doctor's, leafing through weeks-old magazines to pass time? Looking for anything, anything, that would be at least vaguely amusing... something to busy your eyes and your brain, better than staring into a wall?
Well, this mobile app can do it for you.
So, what does it do?
Simply, it serves content. Want an image? You'll get image. A video? Something educative? A piece of news? Just navigate to this site with your smartphone - or use the QR code on the left.
The Concept
Magazine 2.0 was built as an attempt to demonstrate an experience - the experience of reading a paper magazine just for the act of reading. In the time of endless supply of online content, paper magazines are being pushed aside, taking on very specific roles - and a tool for passing time is one of them. Reading this way turns pages of a magazine into "content", material to be devoured and promptly forgotten. It's brain stimulation on very basic level - looking at pictures for colours and shapes, reading for the simple act of decoding letters into words, words into ideas.
...or maybe I'm thinking too hard and spouting pseudo-intelectual nonsense. Either way, the experience is here - and I'm trying to challenge you, a user, to share it with me, think about it and draw your own questions and answers.
Technical specs
The app gets it's content online - it queries APIs of several big online media sites (list bellow). Since each API is different, the process varies, but generally it loads a list of either the content itself (when it's text) or some kind of ID which it uses to get the actual content. Then it randomizes the batch and serves the items one by one.The sources
Thank you for supporting developers with your APIs.Smartphone screenshots are based on a photo by LGEPR on Flickr.
Background
This app (and website) was created as my second semester final project at the Atelier of Graphic design, Faculty of Fine Arts, BUT Brno, for the assignment "Magazine in 21st century", in June 2012. The project was supervised by MgA. Mikulas Machacek and MgA. Marketa Hanzalova. Thank you!
About the author (Anna Frankova)
I'm a first year student of graphic design and a longtime computer geek, putting code into art and art into code.
