Harris Publications, Inc. (http://www.harris-pub.com)
Developed by
Products used
Macromedia Studio 8, Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, Contribute 3, InDesign CS2, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2
Challenge
• Create interactive, rich media, websites with daily content to complement and supplement associated monthly magazines
• Drive web viewers to purchase newsstand issues
Solution
• Leverage the power, extensibility, integration capabilities of Dreamweaver, InDesign CS2, and Photoshop CS2 to speed development and streamline print to web production
• Revamp sites using Dreamweaver to implement CSS style sheets, CSS positioning, and RSS feeds
Benefits
• Increased advertising opportunities and revenue
• Accelerated workflow and productivity
• Added rich media value to sites without taking anything away from magazines
• Created larger viewing audience to sell more magazines
• Conserved resources by keeping web team small
• Strengthened brands and bolstered product loyalty
Project Details
At a time when slick magazines—emblems of the old media guard—face rising costs, a group of trend spotters at Harris Publications is successfully finding and filling niches to attract special-interest readers. They are publishing hot, urban, youth-oriented magazines the likes of which most readers have never seen.
Based in New York City's Silicon Alley, this group of print wizards is turning increasingly to the web to drive newsstand sales of XXL, Rides, and King—leading titles in the world of urban style, cars, basketball, and hip-hop music.
Publishing nearly 100 titles, Harris Publications has been selling special interest magazines for over 30 years. Now, with readers turning to multiple sources of entertainment, Harris faces a two-fold challenge: make magazines and their associated websites complement rather than compete with each other, and enable advertisers to better benefit from the mix.
"Our brands are as relevant online as they are in print, offering advertisers a platform in urban space like no other," says Jonathan Rheingold, executive publisher. Using a full complement of Adobe software – including Adobe’s Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash Professional along with Adobe Creative Suite 2 – the team rapidly develops interactive, rich media web sites packed with clever contests and deep content. The return? An increased number of visitors staying longer on the web sites, and advertising partnerships that garner tremendous click-through rates.
Seamless journey from print to web
The goal of the XXL, Rides, and King websites is to provide a smooth user experience and rich media content hot enough to sear branding into viewers' minds. More than just a re-purposing print content, the publisher views the web as a means to better connect with customers, relishing the instant feedback the web can provide that print magazines cannot. "If we test podcasts and the customers like it, that's what we'll do," says Rheingold. The value of the integrated set of Adobe products that enable the organization to rapidly move content from the printed page to the web, mobile devices, or who-knows-where-next is immeasurable.
The web team takes InDesign CS2 files from the print magazines’ pre-press department and puts Adobe web tools to work. They adjust images for web resolution in Adobe Photoshop CS2, copy text from InDesign layouts into Dreamweaver, build additional Flash content, resize images in Fireworks, stitch the files together in Dreamweaver, and upload to the web.
The entire web workflow at Harris is managed using Dreamweaver software. "It's not a matter of saving time using Dreamweaver, we simply couldn't handle our scope of work without it," says Jason Brightman, web director at Harris. An efficient, small web team concurrently updates sites, redesigns and builds new sites, as well as maintains five large sites.
"I'm still waiting for that button you push to completely build a website," says Brightman. "Short of that, Dreamweaver is fantastic." He believes other web development programs have not kept pace with the Internet industry and that Dreamweaver pushes the standards. "It writes clean, simple, well-organized code," he says. "Page weight stays light—even when loaded with rich media."
Faster development with more sizzle
One of the hottest new sections on the XXL site is iTunes, thanks to Dreamweaver's ability to integrate XML data. With drag and drop simplicity, the developers pull in the iTunes RSS feed to post the Top 10 hip-hop songs and albums updated in real time. Brightman simply styled the feed in Dreamweaver.
Brightman finds the integrated CSS panel feature in Dreamweaver invaluable for experienced designers and novices alike to speed up the development process. When designers work on complex web pages, it's impossible to remember all styles on all elements and how those styles affect other elements. With the integrated panel in Dreamweaver, styles are readily visible and conflicts are avoided. The team is using CSS style sheets and CSS positioning for print, screen, and handhelds—greatly reducing development time while providing pixel-level control across browsers and devices.
Brightman uses a Dreamweaver extension for his open source content management system that places the PHP calls directly into the Dreamweaver page. "It’s a fantastic timesaver," he says. Editors use Adobe’s Macromedia Contribute software controlled by Dreamweaver templates to keep web content fresh and avoid production bottlenecks.
Harris web designers create sites as brand extensions by layering rich media assets that cannot exist on the printed page. For example, Revolver magazine runs a monthly promotion for one lucky band to record an original song. The band posts the song on the Revolver site with a Flash video feed of the band inside the recording studio. "We're giving the reader something extra and not taking anything away from the magazine," says Brightman.
It's no surprise that video plays a key role on a hip-hop site like XXL. Brightman and his team are strictly Flash video devotees. They cringe at the thought of viewers waiting for applications to open or plug-ins to download as is the case with QuickTime, RealAudio, and Windows Media Player. "We use the video encoder inside Flash Professional 8, and simply upload to the site," says Brightman. "For viewers—including those with dial-up connections—the video is just there."
The most popular section on the Ride site is called From the Street, where readers upload pictures of their custom cars. Viewers vote on cars and prizes are awarded. "We did the entire custom car project in Dreamweaver with drag and drop simplicity using the powerful forms feature," says Brightman. He can update a site with new content in a matter of hours.
Advertisers want in
Contests and promotions keep viewers coming back more often and staying longer, a fact noticed by big advertisers. Reebok's "I Am What I Am" promotion, one of the most celebrated youth-oriented, pop-culture campaigns of 2005, was highly visible in Harris magazines and websites. The print component of the campaign drove readership to the web site where they interacted with the advertiser. "It was the ideal connection between publisher, customer, and sponsor," says Rheingold.
Most importantly, Harris is mastering the art of integrating advertising into web pages. They use the Google AdSense program, which provides links to products and services relevant to what viewers are looking at. The results are so good that Google is going to the Harris group to find out why click-through rates have skyrocketed.
Harris uses PHPAdsnew, an extension integrated into their open source content management system, to centrally manage ads. When advertisers including Nike, Ford, AOL, and DoubleClick run ads, the system drops the ad code directly into Dreamweaver. No time is spent placing ads. Much to Brightman's delight, the ads show up in Dreamweaver layouts.
Cultivating readership on- and off-line
Harris has access to talent in a wide variety of multi-billion dollar industries in which news is measured in minutes not months—from red carpet hip-hop artists to pro basketball giants. The content of magazines like XXL may be unfamiliar to many, but pop culture by definition, reaches a diverse group of devoted followers.
"There's no greater barometer for passion than when a reader pays full cover price," says Rheingold. In the case of XXL, with an audited circulation over 370,000, approximately 90% of buyers pay the $3.95 newsstand tab.
Those glossy print magazines are created in Adobe Creative Suite 2 software. Jimmy O'Donnell, chief technical officer at Harris, claims the print workflow is simple, despite the thousands of pages in progress. "We don't use special systems for handling metadata, because we don’t have to," he says. Designers working in Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and InDesign CS2 simply take folders on and off servers as needed. Creative Suite 2 is installed on all artists’ computers, unleashing design creativity to help boost sales.
"We'll be a one hundred percent InDesign shop very soon, because it makes my life easier" says O'Donnell. "QuarkXPress crashes, handles updates poorly, and has font problems." The advantage of an integrated Adobe workflow is that all the right things are in all the right places, according to O'Donnell, and they are totally reliable. "Nobody shows up in my office telling me their Adobe product crashed."
"We've had the privilege of working with Adobe during the last decade as its products transformed the publishing industry," says Rheingold. "Now we're going to mirror our print success on the web with Adobe."
