Analyse and criticize Crafts Beautiful brand.

Focus your
attention on how this printed magazine has moved its
contents in the online version and in the application for
mobiles and tablets.
Magazines are constantly moving their contents to digital platforms, as a consequence of
technological development and increasing use of different devices by the audience.
Nowadays any printed magazine needs an equivalent digital version, which matches with
a very relevant presence in social networks. Being able to communicate regularly with
customers through the website, emails, and social networks can build deeper
relationships with customers (Carroll, 2014) and the employment of these new
technological tools has become more and more useful for magazine brands. This essay
will analyse Crafts Beautiful: a monthly printed magazine delivered for women with free
time available, focused on crafts. It established a website in 1999, while a digital
magazine app is available both in Google Play and iTunes Store.

Social Media Strategy

Social media strategy is a crucial decision for a digital magazine. Certainly, Crafts
Beautiful has a good presence in social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram
and also Busymitts, which is an online crafting community. However, its popularity is not
so widespread and the comparison with another lifestyle and crafts magazine makes it
evident.
For instance, Crafts Beautiful Facebook page has only 14.582 likes, while Mollie Makes,
which is one of its competitors, gained 127.708 likes so far (data viewed on the 16 th of
November). On Instagram the gap is conspicuous: Mollie Makes 101.000 followers
prevail over the 1.273 users following Crafts Beautiful. Brad Insight (2016) shows that the
total net circulation of Crafts Beautiful printed magazine (58.500) is more than Mollie
Makes one (27.118), but this last brand is undeniably more successful in the social
networks.
Moreover, Mollie Makes has created a YouTube channel to publish video tutorials: a real
and efficient support for crafting. Conversely, Crafts Beautiful hasnt landed yet on this
web-sharing platform which perfectly fits the aim of a craft magazine: showing handiwork
step-by-step. Social media offers publishers two opportunities: gaining a community
which advertises their media brand and a better knowledge of their audience at the
same time (Cunningham, 2015). For this reason, Crafts Beautiful should revise its digital
identity.

Design adaptation for various devices

Creating an app from a printed magazine isnt an easy shift and the variety of devices
used by the readers complicate this move. Hill and Lashmar (2014) observe that app
creation is very different to web design as smartphones have navigation systems which
are very different to desktop computers. As they note, smartphones have touch screens
on which users can tap, swipe, pinch and reverse pinch just using their fingers.
Crafts Beautiful has properly distinguished the design for its web page from the app
design, but a difference is needed also between the tablet and smartphone versions.
Indeed, each device has its own characteristics and functionality which shape the
reading experience (Stam and Scott, 2014). Leafing through a digital magazine on an
iPad and an iPhone are two different activities which involve a divergent behaviour by the
reader. Adapting the content to each device is essential to ensure the product best

fruition, because every medium is unique: one size never fits all (Lynch cited in Quinn,
2001).

PDF is a steam locomotive

A PDF replica is apparently a simple digital conversion of a printed magazine, but it
reveals hidden dangers. Crafts Beautiful app is a mere PDF of the printed magazine: even
the barcode is still on the top of the cover page. Filloux (2011) argues that
the PDF document format is digital publishings worst enemy, emphasising its
obsolescence with an incisive simile: PDF is to e-publishing what the steam locomotive
is to the high-speed train.
The design for a printed magazine cant work on a mobile screen and the inevitable
consequence is the consumers loss of interest in his reading. Despite this, editors should
take advantage of all the opportunities that the new technological tools give. A digital
publication is like a combination of print, TV and online publishers must understand
these dynamics and find the right mix in their story telling techniques for digital
publications (Cunningham, 2015). Thus, Crafts Beautiful should reinvent its app,
avoiding the PDF format to enhance interactivity and to create an innovative, more
attractive design.

An easier read
As far as the layout is concerned, Crafts Beautifuls articles are usually composed of short
paragraphs thanks to the division in numbered instructions related to each craft. This
choice makes the reading easier, because long paragraphs intimidate the readers and
make the body copy awkward (Carroll, 2014). In addition, bulleted lists facilitate
skimming and scanning the text.
However, the digital magazine app has maintained its four-columns grid: a layout totally
unsuitable for a smartphone screen. Carroll (2014) refers to a study by the Poynter
Institute when he states that one-column formats are more highly read than those with
more than one column of text. Therefore, Crafts Beautiful should reduce the columns
from four to one: the page lengthening or the possibility to scroll down would allow
reading the whole text.
In addition to one-column layout, bold words would improve the readability of the
articles. Quinn (2001) highlights how important the layout is, because nowadays the
readership has become very visually sophisticated: they avoid occupying their time with
something hard to read. For this reason, he suggests the application of bold to point out
key words. More in detail, Crafts Beautiful could bold one word in each paragraph, so
following the steps to craft would be more comfortable.

Visual friendly
Clearness should be Crafts Beautifuls priority, since its readership could consult it to be
guided and inspired. Images are better than words to show ideas for crafts, especially if
the user wants to choose which one to create. Therefore, in the section Cards and
Paper, the pictures size could be increased and the descriptions about each card could
become pop-up texts. McCormick (2015) pinpoints the absence of constraints in a digital
magazine: the photos that couldnt be larger in the printed issue because of paper
expensive price can be wider in the app. In Crafts Beautiful app, an interactive plusbutton in the corner of an image could simply show the pop-up text (see Figure n.1).
Similarly, Cunningham (2015) promotes visual improvements in digital magazines: With
more photos and interactive graphics, the articles can be more informative and

attractive; videos can add an additional journalistic dimension. Indeed, some video
tutorial could perfectly replace the sequence of still images that Crafts Beautiful uses to
explain a craft process (see Figure n.1). As Hill and Lashmar (2014) advise, videos look
amazing on tablets: inserting them is a good choice, whether placing them directly in the
layout or adding a hyperlink to YouTube.
Another issue for digital readers of Crafts Beautiful is the excessive number of pages:
there are 124. Who has the patience to pinch and zoom through a 100 page magazine
online?, asked McCormick (2015) in a witty, rhetorical question. The number of pages in
Crafts Beautiful could be easily reduced by gathering the crafts that belong to the same
section in one page. Then, pop-ups and hyperlinks could allow the reader to examine
each craft in depth.
Interactivity is the key
The lack of interactivity in Crafts Beautiful app is obvious: the reader can just leaf
through the consecutive pages and the only way to skip them is using a menu that
appears at the bottom of the screen (see Figure n.3). Instead a home button would help
the users to browse the digital magazine, selecting the interested section. The majority
of applications include a home screen which works as a menu to explore other sections
(Hill and Lashmar, 2014) and Crafts Beautiful would definitely seem more orderly. Indeed,
Carroll (2014) asserts that the readers should always have a clear awareness of where
they are and precisely how that part is related to the rest.
Some regular box-outs in Crafts Beautiful could easily become interactive. For example,
Crafts tips and Start with, which contains a list of the needed material (see Figure
n.4), could be pop-ups that show the text just after a tap. Another attractive and useful
tool is the photo gallery: its the perfect solution when several images need to be
displayed with their captions (Figure n.5). In addition to, the box-out Go shopping (see
Figure n.6) suggests where to buy some materials, so a hyperlink to shop online would fit
perfectly. All these interactive options would enhance the readers experience and would
realize what Quinn (2001) declares as one of designers duties: make navigation easy,
providing a plain design and deleting any clutter.
Conclusion
Overall, Crafts Beautiful could improve its app through a few steps. The reduction of
pages and columns would make it more appealing, while some video tutorials and photo
galleries would organise the content in a modern way. Moreover, the addition of a home
button, pop-ups and hyperlinks would transform it in an interactive digital magazine.
Editors and designers should understand that an app is not a constraint, but an
opportunity to renovate a magazine.

Sofia Muschio