Adobe MAX CC 2018 Announcements, Hearst’s Acquisition of Rodale, Vogue-Vice Collaboration, Q&A With Sweet Editor, Using Adobe InDesign CC 2018, Women in Media, TFP’s Infographic Pick

Welcome to Technology for Publishing’s roundup of news, stories of interest, and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing posts about product releases at Adobe MAX, more consolidation in the magazine business as Hearst acquires Rodale, a multiplatform partnership between Vogue and Vice, content strategy at Hearst’s Snapchat-exclusive brand, and more.

  • adobe max 2017Adobe unveiled the next generation of Creative Cloud at this week’s Adobe MAX event, which kicked off in a big way with the largest rollout of products and new features since CC debuted five years ago. (See our blog for some of the keynote highlights and what’s new in InDesign.) Among the announcements and new releases were updates to InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Lightroom Classic, as well as new tools including Lightroom CC, Animator, Dimension, and XD. Along with that, Adobe emphasized the emerging role of its Sensei artificial intelligence framework and the AI-enabled capabilities now embedded in many of the new CC tools. According to Adobe’s announcement blog, the “AI revolution is emerging as one of the most profound technological paradigm shifts.”
  • In a deal that further consolidates the magazine industry, Hearst announced it’s buying Rodale, the family-owned publisher of titles such as Prevention, Men’s Health, and Runner’s World. The agreement, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, also includes Rodale’s book publishing business, The New York Times reports. “The magazine industry’s financial downturn has hit small and midsize publishers particularly hard,” the article notes, citing Wenner Media’s sale of Us Weekly and Men’s Journal this year and its decision to sell a controlling stake in Rolling Stone, as well as Emerson Collective’s recent purchase of a majority stake in The Atlantic.
  • “Seemingly contrasting styles of grace and grit” will come together in a new Vogue-Vice multiplatform partnership known as Project Vs, according to an Adweek post. The 100-day project, set to launch next year, will include a new website with cross-brand videos, photos, long-form stories and other content featuring “prominent cultural figures, movements and societal issues, with each week highlighting a different theme,” the article says. “What started as a slow dance collaboration has quickly become a high-speed collision between Vice and Vogue, juxtaposing the many social, political and cultural tensions of our times,” said Vice’s Tom Punch at the project unveiling.
  • On Folio’s site, Hearst’s Mallory Rice, the newly promoted editor of the publisher’s straight-to-Snapchat Discover brand, shares her team’s content strategy and metrics for measuring engagement with its 20 million unique monthly visitors. Sweet, which targets teens and young women, has the advantage of not “chasing the news cycle,” Rice says, and the tools to create interactive features not available on other platforms. And while it uses traditional forms of audience measurement, new polls and quizzes provide valuable insights that drive content decisions, Rice says. What’s the plan for Sweet going forward? In addition to enhanced visual storytelling, Rice says her team will be focused on brand collaborations, events, and some “experimental printed products.”

On the Technology for Publishing Blog

Image: Adobe

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Posted by: Monica Sambataro

Monica Sambataro
Monica Sambataro is a contributing editor and copyeditor for Technology for Publishing. Her publishing background includes work for leading technology- and business-related magazines and websites.
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