“The New Minimum. A magazine.”

This was my attempt at trying to append a description to the name of my newest black-hole-of-unbillable-hours.

After about six months of thinking, planning, designing, procrastinating, fighting with code, and moving a few times, The New Minimum launched in January. I was satisfied with what it was, but more excited for what it could become. Discussions around ways to read on screens, design for content, and navigate large on-screen areas were occupying the imaginations and blogposts of designers, content creators, publishers, and tech pundits everywhere. Right after The New Minimum went live, iPad was announced. The timing was perfect.

Lessons Learned

Ambitious plans are good; without them you never get to the moon. Shipping is better, though. Is thinking that a staff of one can write, design, and code a new issue every month overly ambitious? That’s still the goal of TNM, but as my cousin loves to remind me, trying the same

thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So, what’s gotta give?

Enhance progressively. As soon as the site launched (before, even) there was a list of things to add, fix, and change for Issue 02. This list grew in length and complexity and quickly became too scary to look in the face. I put it off and put it off, vowing to fix everything in one fell swoop in a solid one- or two-day session(1). If you try to think back to the last time you had two full days to devote to a personal project, I’m sure you can see where this is going. In the meantime, your readers are left with an experience you know could be better and stale content. A better idea would’ve been to tackle a few items a day.

Design and code for flexibility. Fortunately, with a little planning ahead, the visual design and information architecture have absorbed new features, content, and layouts very effortlessly. The code, not so much. (After all, I’m a designer first and developer distant, distant second). Writing new stories doesn’t take long (though I’ll let you judge the results), and the hardest thing about designing them is limiting

my ideas to things I can actually build efficiently. The biggest challenge, then, in creating a new issue was being able to code it quickly, easily, and in a way that allowed for rich visual design. I built the site around the first issue and assumed I would just “figure it out” when the second issue rolled around. No surprise, then, that when the second issue did come around, the code was a tangle. Unsurprisingly, a little extra work and planning would’ve saved a lot down the road.

Plan to not have as much time as you’d like. Time ebbs and flows with life, work, motivation, and World Cups. Weeks I was moving, out of town, or on deadline revealed themselves as fewer updates and shrinking traffic. This is unavoidable, so instead of trying to stop it, learn to fake it:

1. When you’ve got extra time, schedule articles for when you don’t.
2. Think about different types of content and ways to present it that still fit within your vision but require different amounts of energy. For example, adding songs to the New Music section versus creating original content.

3. Curate and edit ruthlessly so even archived content is still relevant.
4. Originally a full 50% of the front page was dedicated to original content. At some point this is going to be problematic. Mix original and borrowed content.
5. Build a few templates that are easy to customize with a few lines of CSS or by swapping out background slices. Make a really good default template for posts that are time-sensitive.

Obviously not all these solutions will be relevant to your site, so find what works with your model.

Summon next-level organizational skills. Content is culled from a mountain of RSS feeds, about 100 unique bookmarks opened as tabs every day, Twitter, submissions, and my own ideas for original stories. Narrow all this down to things worth following up on (if you’re me, over coffee in the morning) and sort them into bins: long articles go to Instapaper, references for future articles get bookmarked, things I know I want to come back to get sent to a mail folder with its own rules for sorting, ideas for articles get written down in iPhone’s Notes app,

and so on. Set everything else aside. Go back later through that pile and make another pass. What’s left after this are your new articles.

I’m not recommending this specific methodology as much as I’m recommending simply having one. And make it routine, as the routine is as important as what it consists of.

What’s New

The most important changes are structural, but there are plenty on the surface as well. The total list of changes, additions and fixes came to well over 100. Here are a few:

1. The homepage now only shows an excerpt of the current Feature. Found content will populate the lower portion to keep things fresh between issues.
2. You can now search the site.
3. You can go forward/backward between articles from within the articles themselves, as well as see related articles. You can sit back and use your arrow keys to get around.
4. Subscription options have moved.
5. You can now hide the Table of Contents if you

want to focus on the articles.
6. There is a real contact page.
7. There’s a section to publish reader correspondence.
8. You can go back to past issues from its own section in the Table of Contents.
9. The logic that queries/serves articles has been improved.
10. Fonts are being served by Typekit and a lot of general nits with the typography have been addressed.
11. You can now enjoy the site on your iPhone/iPad, albeit somewhat unreliably due to some issues with Typekit. I chose typography over device support, but I have it on good authority that Typekit will have some good news for us in this department soon. Otherwise, the site will undergo continued optimization for these devices.

Sponsors

A big thanks to this issue’s sponsor: The Font Game for iPhone.

You will now find placements for products that support TNM. Since ads are content too (2), the

only products you will ever see here are ones that we’ve chosen based on the strength of their concept, design, execution, and conscientiousness.

Sponsor may be a euphemism for advertiser, but at least we’ve chosen them based on products designed and made with care by real people. If you’re interested in supporting the site, which at this point is purely a labor of love, please write.

Content

There’s a story about how, during the space race, NASA spent millions of dollars developing a pen that could write in zero-gravity. The Russians, in contrast, thought to simply use a pencil. So consumed by making a pen that worked, the true goal was forgotten: to write. Though the story turns out, disappointingly, to not be entirely true (3), it’s that kind of idea that is the focus of The New Minimum.

Originally this blog lived at NEW/ STUFF. The content is more focused now, so you (hopefully) won’t find a lot of stuff you’ve already seen.

Also, there are a lot of other sites that position things that are cleverly decorated as being well designed. We just won’t do that, and if we do, please let us know. A painted handle doesn’t solve any of the deficiencies of a traditional axe, and very few people need axes (even fewer need expensive ones that don’t take well to wear).

We’re trying to do a better job of offering a certain perspective without being prescriptive about the subject, though design and technology will be clear themes.

Magazines in 2010

The original idea of The New Minimum was based on the magazine model. In keeping with that tradition, articles with a few featured stories would come out monthly. But at the same time, every day found content was posted so already the very basis of the periodical concept was being challenged. As the debate about digital magazines and reading on screens in general picks up, pretty much everything about adapting the traditional reading experience to screens is deserving of a complete rethinking.

If a digital magazine has a movie intro instead of a static cover, should you just make a short movie? Is there a point to publishing a lot of content once a month, or is it better to publish a little bit each day? Are magazines apps, websites, or beautiful things we still print? Should they be more graphic, with rich art direction and unique layouts, or less, like reading in Instapaper? Is a digital page a fixed size or a giant scrollable canvas, and if it’s the latter, which way does it scroll(4)? Should it look the same on every device? If so, is that even technically possible? Do sharing tools distract or add value?

This is a topic which we’ll look at in more detail in future articles. It’s fascinating stuff and the best part is that we’re building the new paradigms right now.

And with that, I give you The New(est) Minimum. Enjoy.

Jacob Heftmann
Editor

(1) Incidentally, it ended up being much more than one or two days’ worth of work
(2) Ads are Content Too, Mule Design
(3) Wikipedia page on the Space Pen
(4) After trying out horizontal scrolling with columns for this article, I’m inclined to think this isn’t the answer based on a variety of reasons (varying from technology to readability). I’m willing to give it a shot.