Much has been made of the iPad's potential to change the way we consume books, newspapers, and other texts of all shapes and sizes, and one company that seems particularly poised to take advantage of the tablet's 9.7-inch multitouch display is Zinio. Since 2002, the company has provided digital versions of popular magazines (as well as a selection of books) to a variety of platforms, with top titles like Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Cosmopolitan available for purchase. With the iPad launch in sight, Zinio president and CEO Rich Maggiotto spoke with us earlier this month about designing its app for the device and bringing a new level of interactivity to digital publications.

"For us, what the iPad is introducing is a much richer experience, and richer comes in two forms. One, a lot of our content that we sell and distribute is very high fidelity content: phenomenal design magazines, and high-fidelity books that are very, very rich on graphics, and really rich on photography and illustration," explains Maggiotto. "The second is the ability to really rethink how you can bring that content to life in many respects. How do you make it interactive, and how do you design content for the medium?"

Interactive digital magazines aren't a new concept for Zinio, which already offers interactive versions of select publications (including National Geographic and Popular Science Genius Guides) that include video and audio segments, photo galleries, and often navigational tools that pair web-like function with a more print-like aesthetic. But we recently got a taste of what Zinio plans to do with the iPad via a series of preview clips of the company's own VIV Mag.

 

While the women's lifestyle publication may only target a sliver of the initial iPad target audience, the clips hold strong implications for what could be the future of reading on iPad, showing dynamic backgrounds and segues for feature articles, as well as a lavish introduction video produced simply to introduce the cover stars (in this case, actor and environmental activist Ed Begley, Jr. and his wife Rachelle). Granted, not every magazine -- whether hosted by Zinio or competing apps -- will embrace this sort of approach as fervently as VIV Mag appears to be, but with Wired and other top publications showing interest in tablet-enhanced editions, there's plenty for prospective iPad owners to look forward to on the device.

During our chat, Maggiotto remained coy on providing exact details on what to expect from the iPad version of the Zinio reader, wishing instead to release them upon the app's launch in April. However, he did say his team has been focused on "optimizing our reading and shopping experience, and our My Collection experience to take advantage of the screen real estate," alongside exploring options for interactivity.

Maggiotto praises the iPad's pairing of a large screen and speedier processor (over the iPhone) with a touch-based interface, saying, "For developers, the combination of the two is sort of a dream come true." Furthermore, he believes the device's performance will truly surprise those used to the speed of an iPhone. "I think that people who have an iPhone are used to dealing with content applications on a screen that size and a certain processing speed," he adds. "I think that speed of the processor that Apple has shown in their keynote and in videos will really be magical, as well as the screen sensitivity."

Actually bringing Zinio to the iPad has been a fast-paced endeavor, made all the more challenging by the fact that the device is largely unlike anything they've worked on in the past. "There's not that many great examples of gesture-based slates or tablets out there that have been around that allow us to think about user interactions, so [we are] really kind of thinking through innovative ways that are very intuitive from a gesture standpoint," he says. "I think a lot of people are going to learn very, very quickly as this is coming to the market, as to what consumers like and what they don't like."

Maggiotto describes the development process as "swift," adding, "There's not a lot of time, to be quite honest, from the moment the SDK was released to the moment the product will come on to the market. The development process is moving at a rapid, I would say torrid pace, cramming six months of what typically would be development into six weeks. So it's been a lot of fun, because it's clearly a very innovative, cool product that's going to get a lot of publicity."

And with Zinio's "Unity" platform, magazines purchased on one device can be read on any other Zinio-supported device, so users already reading their favorite titles on Macs or iPhones can pick up an iPad and have all their subscriptions carry over. It's one of the reasons Maggiotto believes the iPad version will be even more successful than their previous iPhone version. "We expect it to be," he says. "We've had some great success with the iPhone version, but I think when you start adding the kind of fidelity and screen real estate to bring the kind of content that we have that sell and distribute to life, it becomes a much more engaging experience."