I used to read a lot of digital magazines. I once had a subscription to something I can only describe as the “Netflix of magazines” on a tablet I rented from university, because I sought inspiration when designing my school’s own iPad-exclusive issues of our student-run magazine. I swiped through the fun interactivity of Wired, the delectably designed pages of Bon Appetit, among others. Then, as all school rentals come to pass, I stopped renting the tablet. I’m not sure if digital issues of magazines have been able to adapt and withstand in the years since, but now another magazine is joining the leagues of digital-exclusive interactivity. Though this time, with a twist.
from shopping to taking AR-selfies with the cover model herself
Allure, the women’s beauty magazine, has officially introduced their first mobile, augmented reality-saturated issue. The December issue, with AR-denoting icons on the print issue’s pages, encourages readers to openly utilize the new Allure Unbound app. As readers scan specially marked pages, they can watch the pages in front of them emerge with life on their phone’s screens—from shopping items within the magazine to even taking AR-selfies with a cutout of the cover model, Gigi Hadid, herself.
For now, the interactivity in the December issue is minimal, this being a sort of test-run and all. In the future though, publisher Agnes Chapski and editor-in-chief Michelle Lee hope to usher the app into other possibilities, maybe even of the AR-wearable makeup variety, similar to how Snapchat implements lenses. “The key thing for me is that we’re really just scratching the surface right now,” Lee told the blog Fashionista. “We’ve talked about doing a truly shoppable issue, we can do truly 360-degree video, and it’s really different from other things that are out there because the experience is very immediate and you can see inside the page, which is cool.”
You can read more about how to use the Allure Unbound app here from the magazine’s blog. The December issue is on newsstands now and you can read the cover story featuring Hadid here. Careful though, no AR in this digital story.
