Our Work
Delivering your vision
Intelligent Life website
Cross-platform publishing CMS for The Economist
Intelligent Life is a premium bi-monthly cultural magazine published by The Economist Group. It describes its coverage as "the arts, style, food, wine, cars, travel and anything else under the sun, as long as it’s interesting". The Intelligent Life’s digital presence was failing to do the print edition justice and it took a lot of effort to create each individual piece of content for three different devices. We worked with them to develop a simple workflow to allow the editorial team to publish content for the web and app together, with enhanced imagery regardless of device or screen size.
The Challenge
The project aim was to mimic the style and grace of the print edition online without it being a real challenge for The Economist team to manage. It would need to be able to allow editors to manage the web and app back end together.
We also had to enable the editorial team to publish greatly enhanced imagery on the web and app with control over the crop and orientation. By creating a fresh, modern UI and optimising the structure, our aim was to increase the number of visitors and increase visitor engagement with the content.
The Solution
After reviewing the existing information architecture and investigating existing content types, we started to work on the new optimised structure of the website. We focused on creating more a intuitive user experience and content management workflows for the future website and the app. In print, the Intelligent Life experience is a rich immersive one where the extraordinary quality of the writing and photography are reinforced by the luxurious design and feel of the magazine.
Our designer created a modern mobile first design, using atomic design with a focus on beautiful imagery regardless of device or screen size.
The solution allows the editors to manage app and web content as one. Content is formatted using Drupal, then delivered to the app using a custom theme. A separate fully responsive theme is used for content displayed on the website.
URL: http://intelligentlifemagazine.com/
The Economist
Nick Blunden, Global Managing Director
We are very happy with the new website and app so I just wanted to thank you for your work on it. Given all of the constraints it was very impressive indeed.
The Key Benefits
The editorial team for the Intelligent Life magazine were previously preparing the digital content three times for their website, tablet app and mobile app. With the new website, Drupal is used as the primary source for all digital content, publishing it to the website and making it available as a separate app through the Pugpig mobile publishing platform.
- App and web content are managed as one
- Cross-platform development
- Greatly enhanced imagery
- Mobile first, fully responsive website
- More engaging user interface
