Nico Brünjes

@nicobruenjes

nicobruenjes.de

DIE ZEIT

• estimated 1946
• 500.000 copies sold per week

ZEIT ONLINE

ZEIT MAGAZIN ONLINE

Longform history

Art Directed Blogging

There is some criticism though we will meet again later…

Sadly, many designers don’t understand the difference between design and art direction; sadder still, many art directors don’t either: Art direction gives substance to design. Art direction adds humanity to design.

Dan Mall

Well designed?

Snowfall

over 2.9 million visitors in the six days of launch

Peabody Award

Purlitzer Price

What happened after snow fall?

Snowfalling…

Criticism

And as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t read “Snow Fall,” either. I’ve tried to get through it a half dozen times, but every time I found it just too big—too long, too visually distracting, too overproduced. […] With its constantly intercutting videos, its unreadability almost feels intentional. Does the Times even care if I read the story? Maybe you’re just supposed to scroll and watch the videos?

slate.com

Mission accomplished?

What makes a longform?

From the technical viewpoint…

lean header

very lean header

animated backgrounds

dropcaps

fixed background

local navigation

slideshows

infographic

blockquotes

inline video

…and responsive webdesign.

Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors).

The problems

• huge amounts of text
• lot of code
• text and design don't match
• feature…ism

Introducing…

Editors

• highly specialised in producing text
• short attention span
• caught in the daily process
• organiszed in departments (politics, germany, econnomy, science etc.)

Developers

• organized in teams
• project management skills
• have tools for management

Longform @ ZEIT ONLINE

ZEIT ONLINE's approach

• core should be the reading experience
• so it's longread, not snow fall
• 1st goal is to deliver a reading experience
  • text not *that* long
  • large and readable fonts and lettering
  • across modern platforms
• the features come in addition to the text
• never pull the user away from the text

»Leuchtturm Projekt«

• prototyping, fast execution
• work in one team
• test new technics
• develop for cms integration

CMS

• all (millions of) articles are stored in a huge content storage
• in XML format
• the CMS is capable of editing these files and publish them to the web servers
• on the web server xml is transformed with XSLT into html
• cached, but nearly in real time

build longform beside the content management system

Managing the project

• Basecamp
• Github
• regular meetings
• prototyping
• three parts:
  • content
  • infographic
  • webdev

100 Jahre Tour de France

Karl-Marx-Allee

Willkommen in Deutschland