Economist launches immersive digital-first 'Essays'
The first of the Essays series includes two interactive features and a full-screen design, breaking 'constraints of print'
The Economist has launched a new digital-first series called Essays, adopting an immersive storytelling style to deliver content outside the "constraints of print".
The series, which started with Democracy, was "an opportunity to start doing things in a different way", digital editor Tom Standage told Journalism.co.uk, to "build for digital-first".
The introduction of the series, which will publish eight Essays a year, signals an interest in the "trend towards single column or much simpler design", Standage explained, which in turn supports a more "immersive reading" experience, as the Economist has already seen from its app engagement statistics.
"We wanted to bring that to our website," he explained, adding that the "idea is it's not designed with constraints of print".
Interactivity 'baked-in from the beginning'
One of the key features of the Essays feature style is that the multimedia and interactive elements are part of the strategy and planning from the start. In the Democracy piece, for example, the feature includes two interactive elements: a heat map and a timeline.
Previously, Standage said, such content may not have been considered "early enough in the process". Instead, when Essays are built, such content will be "baked-in from the beginning", supported by a team – consisting of the writer, and multimedia, design, interactive and user experience team members – working collaboratively throughout the production....MORE
