[mahoni]

Desktop Publishing
is Not
Mobile Publishing

Mahoni Global PT / Mobile Solution Marketing Expert


Santoso Suratso BSc., MBA / CEO Mahoni Global PT. has over 25 years of combined
experience in digital world as Director for Apple computer distributor (1991-97),
Director for Eastman Kodak digital camera (1997-2009)

In 1989, I was probably the most senior engineer for Apple platform in Indonesia. I trained most resellers and customers in Indonesia on desktop-publishing which was Apple key invention at that time. It was so amazing how the difficult and painful layout process was replaced by by digital desktop publishing. Save money, save time and increase productivity.

They key purpose in desktop publishing was to digitally layout all the text and images first so you will maximize the layout before printing to film and then paper. Its really the tool to maximizing content in layout. Why it was great? Basically because paper and printing are expensive, plus the delivery of those bulky printed materials also very expensive with the increasing cost of transport, gasoline and human operators. So a bad layout will look bad and will increase the costs in one company unproductively.

Sixteen years after we introduced desktop publishing in Indonesia, the market is so accustomed to desktop publishing, every single page layout was nicely design with great layout to maximize the content of a page. All page designers are so used to size letter or A4 which are common forms of any printers or magazines. This old mindset however is the big bottleneck in the adoption and transformation of emagazine and ebrochure among mobile users.
The suggestion I would like to raise in this writing is that now is the time to change. We no longer need to prison ourself to old format and sizes. Most layouts are no longer printed, its just printed to pdf file or to screen, why do we stuck ourself to A4 and letter format? Most of notebooks are wide screen format, most of mobile devices like smartphones are potrait format.

We need to liberate our mind from paper printing mindset as we no longer print to paper but to digital screen. The best format is to print according to the screen format that your layout will serve.

In this particular writing, I am specifically would like to discuss the points on printing to mobile devices screen (smartphone), which are now the largest browsing devices by consumer in the world, exceeding notebook. Here?s some guideline:

1.   Layout should be vertical, its just much easier to read from your smartphone vertical
2.   Do not layout A4, it is too big for smartphone, think smaller size like A6
3.   Put less content per page, as digital paper is limitless and costless, you can have as much pages as you want
See the following image:



Layout for smartphone and mobile devices should not be bigger than A6 or postcard size layout. Majority of current content are in pdf format size A4 and Letter, which are very difficult to read in mobile smartphone devices, its true you can zoom larger any article, but in all honesty it not friendly and hard to use.

I believe this simple knowledge in changing your layout style to suit the single screen nature in smartphone will be the key insight to transformation of emagazine and ebrochure success in mobile world.