In a first for university magazines nationwide, Loyola Marymount University’s magazine has launched an app for the iPad that serves up content instantly for its audience.
The LMU Magazine app is available for free download at Apple’s App Store.
LMU created the iPad app to reach the broadest possible number of readers, make university news and events more accessible to its various audiences and keep up with the rapidly evolving world of communications, where more than 4.8 billion active mobile devices are in use.
Experts predict that by 2013 more than half of all Web traffic will be on mobile devices. With that in mind, LMU leadership decided it is critical to make LMU Magazine Online available via the iPad app, as well as a Web-based browser.
The iPad approach and the LMU app are part of a larger strategic reinvention of LMU’s largest publication, which was redesigned and renamed LMU Magazine. It is distributed to more than 55,000 people.
Along with LMU Magazine’s new name and a makeover of the print version, editors made sweeping improvements to the magazine’s companion digital publication, LMU Magazine Online, which included full integration with the print edition.
“We’ve been working for months on a plan to integrate our print and electronic communications and we also wanted to take advantage of the strengths of all connectivity channels that are available to us,” said Joe Wakelee-Lynch, editor of the magazine. “As a result, we redesigned our magazine, transformed our magazine website into a rich media environment, and grabbed the opportunity to design an iPad app when we saw iPads and other mobile devices exploding in the marketplace.”
In addition to providing multichannel Internet access via the app, the online magazine added video, audio, slide show and interactive features to better tell the story of one of the leading Catholic universities in the Western United States. The print version features common icons to inform readers when a story they are reading has value-added, multi-media content on the website.
In doing the digital redesign, LMU editors and staff examined a variety of cutting-edge publications that utilize the Internet, including the New York Times and Wired magazine. “We are forward thinking and our strategy is to be in-step with the most forward-thinking magazines and publications,” said John Kiralla, senior director of Web, new media and design. “What it says to the world is that LMU has some edge and we are ready for the evolution in communications.”
LMU Magazine published a story about its comprehensive redesign, including the iPad app, in its summer 2010 issue and simultaneously posted the story on its online site. In the past week, a 2.0 version of the app was launched. It expands the featured articles section to include additional feeds of content from LMU Magazine Online. It also features landscape orientation, as well as improved performance, user interface and connectivity.