CROWN PUBLICATIONSVISIT THE CROWN PUBLICATIONS WEBSITE
Crown publishes numerous trade magazines. We needed to set up a template for displaying the online info from these magazines in a consistent way. We set up an extensive back-end system for uploading new issues, attaching PDFs to selected articles, uploading cover images and so on.
The template for each publication has details of the issues, a neat slide-out panel for back-issues, a news feed, endorsements and awards. Issues can also have a flash-based online reader version.
The site also handles subscriptions and advertising for the publications, and has a advert manager that places ads globally and per publication. There's a time and place for the fancy stuff
The site has a huge amount of information, and the navigation is fairly extensive, and the site is further complicated by some pages belonging to a specific publications and some to Crown the company. A such, we needed to keep animations and fancy design elements to a minimum. The single "slick" piece of interaction that we added is a slide-out panel that shows the 6 latest back-issues for each publication. This small, neat animation has worked really well, mainly because it provides just the right amount of "cool" to the site.
view the back-issues slider for "Modern Mining" | page-flip online reader
It turns out that the SA magazine industry is quite web-savvy: They allow digital "reads" of magazines to count towards circulation figures. To facilitate this, we implemented a beautiful Flash-based "page-flip" online reader where visitors to the site can page through new issues of each magazine. Users need to be registered on the site, and each magazine that they open to flip through counts towards that publication's monthly circulation figures.
View the latest "Electricity + Control" Feb 2010 issue with the Online Reader (requires registration) FROM OUR CLIENT
This is the third major project Black Square has undertaken for Crown Publications since 2006. Once again they have grasped the very essence of what we had in mind and translated it into an end-product well beyond our expectations! We have received only positive feedback regarding the uncomplicated design and contents layout as well as easy navigation which is continued throughout the site. Not only is our new website a major improvement, it has definitely put us ahead of our competitors. The highlight of the site is a "page-flip" online reader allowing visitors to browse though our publications. The Content Management System is clear and easy to understand. It enables us to run ad campaigns for our clients efficiently and ensures our website is up-to-date with a clever ‘newsfeeds' feature. We look forward to working with BlackSquare again in the future!
Karen Smith
IT Manager, Crown Publications |
