Red Zero Launches

After many months of development we (Soap Creative) just launched Red Zero for Pacific Magazines.

The initial brief for a "virtual magazine" many mionths ago stipulated they wanted the "page turn: effect. After pushing back on the client I thought we had won this battle.

Then as months pass the client kept asking for the page turn effect and we finally relented. Luckily Mike was able to decode the infamous code to allow uis to do all the dynamic stuff we needed for this magazine. And also make sure it played back at a decent speed. Flash 8 saved the day for Mike by allow pages to be cached as bitmaps and reduce load times considerably.

it was a huge learning experience for the designers of the magazine. We designed the framework of the magazine but the spreads and everything else was Pac Magazines.

We had many meetings with their designers to show them the possibility of the web and that you don’t have to lay everything out on the page. Issue 2 of Red Zero will be a lot tighter I feel as the designers now have a pretty good grasp of what’s possible.

I had little to do with this project after the initial functionality spec and think it's turned out pretty good.

There's a few spreads in there that look a little rushed but we had little control over this. Hopefully issue 2 will utilise online more by allowing more video, interviews, music streaming and other stuff like that rather than just trying to replicate the feel of a traditional magaizne.

After many months of development we (Soap Creative) just launched Red Zero for Pacific Magazines. The initial brief for a "virtual magazine" many mionths ago stipulated they wanted the "page turn: effect. After pushing back on the client I thought we had won this battle. Then as months pass the client kept asking for the page turn effect and we finally relented. Luckily Mike was able to decode the infamous code to allow uis to do all the dynamic stuff we needed for this magazine. And also make sure it played back at a decent speed. Flash 8 saved the day for Mike by allow pages to be cached as bitmaps and reduce load times considerably. it was a huge learning experience for the designers of the magazine. We designed the framework of the magazine but the spreads and everything else was Pac Magazines. We had many meetings with their designers to show them the possibility of the web and that you don’t have to lay everything out on the page. Issue 2 of Red Zero will be a lot tighter I feel as the designers now have a pretty good grasp of what’s possible. I had little to do with this project after the initial functionality spec and think it's turned out pretty good. There's a few spreads in there that look a little rushed but we had little control over this. Hopefully issue 2 will utilise online more by allowing more video, interviews, music streaming and other stuff like that rather than just trying to replicate the feel of a traditional magaizne.