The only Independent School Magazine to make the Award.

We are delighted to have been announced a Finalist in the prestigious 2010 Digital Magazines Awards with entries from over 26 countries. The Interactive Digital Viewbook we created for Bloxham School in the UK received this accolade as well as Designer of the Year (Michael Lloyd-Stern from Viewbook Design). This is the only School to have received the award with heavy competition from big brands such as SKY News. Michael Lloyd-Stern commented: “I am really delighted for Bloxham School, whose vision of using the best medium to appeal to this new era where parents and students prefer and expect everything digitally, really made this all possible. I am equally delighted that our innovative work for schools has been recognized on the world stage.”

Join the Debate on the Printed Viewbook versus the Digital Viewbook

The debate may be new to the education marketing world but not so in the world of Business to Business or consumer magazines. Think of most any big UK or US brand and you will find that they are now producing a digital magazine. So just why has the digital magazine arrived and why is it becoming so popular? Firstly, faster internet speeds are now the norm at home and in the office making so many more things possible. We, as a society now spend more time on the internet than reading magazines or watching TV. Secondly the birth of eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle and the iPad make reading on the move a light weight, slip in my handbag / briefcase, must have. And while you may be in the “I prefer reading printed versions of books etc” camp, many people find reading on screen far easier as they can make the text any size they want.

So what are Digital Magazines – after all they’re not websites and they’re not print. Is it a lazy way to get online without investing in a really good website? You may have been led to think so by the proliferation of PDF / Flash whatever replicas of print where you take your Viewbook and simply turn it into a page turning edition. Some simply convert their Viewbook into a PDF file, which loads at a snail’s pace, even on the fastest computers. Others convert their printed Viewbook into page turning online magazines using Flash based software – simple and low cost and many schools & universities have them. However many of these printed online replica’s are clunky to use, slow to load and have type so small that you have to constantly zoom in and out. Not to mention the photograph quality is often blurry. So the PDF or simple Page turning printed equivalents have major shortcomings – although on the upside they are still environmentally friendly and lower on cost than printed Viewbooks.

So what’s a REAL Digital Magazine you ask yourself? Well firstly they are formatted to easily be read on a computer screen, secondly the good digital magazines – not all – offer outstanding visual quality and thirdly they make clever use of interactivity within the content to bring your school to life with video, audio and animation. The best digital magazines for readers are the ones created as digital magazines specifically rather than taking the printed prospectus and converting it into a page turning magazine. The Viewbooks created as true digital Viewbooks also offer clickable tables of contents, clickable links such as “Contact Admissions” and forward to a friend and reader statistics which no printed Viewbook, PDF or simple page turning printed Viewbook replica can ever achieve.

So now you know the difference in digital magazines and PDF page turning printed Viewbooks. But why have an online Viewbook when you have a website? Well, the two have different functions. The website is designed to be highly navigable and offer information in brief, easily digestible pieces. Some school and univerisity websites boost of having over 500 pages for the viewer to look at and you have no control in what order the Prospective viewer sees the information. For example, they may decide to go from the home page to the admissions page to the high school news page to the fees page in 3 jumps. They may miss the page that lists your best features. So websites are fantastic information repositories for parents, prospective families, alumni and the community where all the info, the small print, the bullying policies and the news about the school or university are held. But your Prospective Families don’t always want infinite and constantly changing, and they don’t always have the time or desire to explore your 500 pages. The digital Viewbook however takes your readers by the hand and takes them through the best features and benefits at your school or university in a linear fashion in exactly the way you want them to see you. So readers enjoy the same, familiar experience as thumbing through a print magazine, dwelling over stories, following the flow of the magazine’s layout and looking at quality pictures. Except the digital Magazine can be viewed immediately by Mom and then forwarded on to Dad in the office at the click of a mouse.

But here is the sweet spot for digital magazines. Unlike print, true digital magazines provide a rich, immerse environment with video, animation and interactive features that provide much more depth. Rather than being the worst of both worlds—neither a good Web site, nor a good print publication—digital magazines can and should be the best of both worlds. They can be fantastic publications that provide a defined, engaging experience for readers, and a much cheaper, and way more environmentally friendly message by the schools themselves. After all what message does a school give, when they send out hundreds of printed Viewbooks but then put tag lines like “Please consider the environment before printing this mail” at the end of every email?

So what do readers of digital magazines think? In surveys taken over the last two years from over 30,000 digital magazine readers worldwide, * their big reasons for loving digital magazines, in order of importance are as follows:

1. More environmentally friendly than printed magazines. (Allows your school to really walk the talk).

2. Easy to save (Download it onto your computer so that you can view it offline if you want.)

3. Ability to search (Particularly useful for large yearly School Magazines)

4. More convenient than print (No more me tooViewbook piles in the lounge).

5. More timely than print (Allows viewers to read it the moment they are researching different schools)

6. Easy to forward (onto Mom, Dad, child, Grandma etc)

7. More convenient to read on my computer (remember more time is spent on the internet now than anything else.)

And nearly 70% of readers value video content as a valuable and positive impact on their overall impression of subjects discussed within the digital magazine.

So readers who read Digital Magazines love them. As a school, you will make huge savings on print and postage. Perhaps the best thing of all is that unlike the printed Viewbook you can analyse the readership statistics over every page to see what works and what does not. So that next year without worrying about the cost of reprinting you can decide to redo page 3 or 4 or 5 with very little headache at all.

So digital magazines are not traditional – they won’t sit on the coffee table along with all the other me too Viewbookss – but they will make a more lasting impression with your Prospective family, on their computer where they spend most of their time. And Digital Magazines do meet the requirements of how today’s changed society, researches and make their decisions.

Join the debate today and post your comments  at the top of this page, on the merits of Printed Viewbooks versus Digital Viewbooks.

“We have moved away from the expensive and environmentally unsound printed prospectus to the new digital interactive Prospectus from mlsMEDIA. We have been delighted with the outcome and overwhelmed with the positive response it is already getting. The savings on print and postage will continue to add benefit to one of the best marketing decisions I have made.”
Nick Irvine, Director of Marketing, Bloxham School