Treesaver, a startup founded by Roger Black and Filipe Fortes, is a platform for combining text and pictures in a layout that scales to fit any size screen. I was pretty excited about it when their teaser video came out several months ago and here’s the first story using the technology: http://www.publicintegrity.org/treesaver/tuna
It seems very workmanlike. Not sure why they didn’t create something super glossy to demo the features of this platform, but maybe there are serious limitations that prevent real design to occur (effing algorithms…). One thing I’ve never understood is why photographs get smaller online. When space is not an issue, most of the photography (if it’s good) should fill the page. Using photography to decorate a page is a waste of time, money and effort. Nice try.
7 Comments
“Using photography to decorate a page is a waste of time, money and effort.” Maybe they didn’t actually spend any actual money on the photography…?
To be honest, doesn’t look any different from a pretty standard blog layout if you ask me, to echo your point. I mean i appreciate if there trying to find a ‘one size fits all’ approach for ipad-ization, making such applications more directly accessible to non- programmers like us, but design is a key aspect all the same.
Thanks for the post!
It’s good to separate the content from design and design from the Treesaver platform. The ICIJ project runs on Treesaver, and has been a successful test of the code. The design was intentionally modest, and was made to match their current web site.
For a richer photographic use of Treesaver, hold on for the launch of Nomad Editions. If you register at Treesaver.net, we can put you on the beta test next week!
I’m not really seeing how this is different than some custom WordPress designs already on the market, especially when a component like PadPressed is included to allow touch and swipe. It is a bit strange that the link will not work on my MacBook Pro, though I do not have an iPad to try it either. If it is iPad only, that seems like an extremely limited platform choice. I would think the idea of upload and publish once is better, instead of needing multiple launch platforms.
My real feeling on all this is that tablets will continue to grow market share, just not specifically iPad, though I expect Apple to be the largest volume of tablet sellers. I think that once Adobe launch CS6 there will be solutions within InDesign to allow publishing for web, tablet, and print with only a few steps beyond content creation. Once all these things become more homogenized and Apple embrace Flash on the iPad, will there be any demand for iPad specific solutions?
why don’t you have a look at it first. WTF?
@A Photo Editor, After commenting, I borrowed an iPad to view it, and I still think that any talented designer using WordPress could accomplish the look and feel. Anyway, I completely agree with your comments about the image sizes. Sorry I didn’t reply sooner.
Agree with Gordon and others…. it seems like yet another also-ran….
Our industry seems to look at “put this magazine on the digitial device” attempts as a panacea.. or something that will hopefully both change the economics of this business to our advantage while helping the environment and cleansing our conscious of all the wasted trees from printed publications….
These attempts seem to be made for the audience of people working in publishing/design/photo/writing worlds, not, uh, and actual mass audience of people who may pay actual money…..
These attempts to re-assert control over the publishing work may not really work well as people are used to, uh, the web…
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