Hot Studio Partners With Zinio and Hearst on Videos Showcasing Magazine Apps

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 3, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Hot Studio Inc., a people-centered experience design firm, played a major role in producing a series of videos showcasing the vision and content for iPad apps with Zinio and Hearst Magazines. The first video in this series is for Marie Claire and was officially released on MarieClaire.com yesterday to coincide with the release of the first Marie Claire monthly interactive issue for iPad.

The videos, created in partnership with Zinio and Hearst, demonstrate innovative features that distinguish the apps as completely re-created versions of their respective magazines. Readers of Marie Claire, for example, can now experience a "living" cover, embedded videos, audio clips, interactive quiz, and user-controlled 360-degree views of featured items and accessories.

"The work we're doing with Zinio and Hearst Magazines points the way to the future of magazine publishing," said Hot Studio President Rajan Dev. "This video beautifully demonstrates how richly Marie Claire and other published properties can be experienced on the iPad or, for that matter, as an app on any other digital platform," he said. Dev noted Hearst's ability to leverage its quality web content greatly helped in creating a truly enhanced magazine experience.

The concepts and video are based on Marie Claire visioning, Hearst App Lab capabilities, and Zinio's digital solutions that leverage its UNITY™ distribution platform and services for publishers. The apps fully utilize Zinio's capabilities with an eye toward future enhancement of magazine experience.  

"With such rapid development in this space right now, this was a terrific opportunity to have Hot Studio get up close and document the creativity, energy and smart work our editors and design teams are bringing to our lab efforts every day.  The video itself is first rate and the sizable documentation that accompanied this project puts us in a really advantageous position as we forge ahead in partnership with Zinio developing the interactive edition of Marie Claire," said Chris Wilkes, Vice President of Digital at Hearst magazines.

The Marie Claire video can be viewed here:

http://www.marieclaire.com/video/?bcpid=616538714001&bctid=696051367001#v696051367001

About Hot Studio

Hot Studio, with offices in San Francisco and New York City, has been envisioning, designing and implementing innovative, award-winning digital experiences since being founded in 1997. For more information visit http://www.hotstudio.com.

About Zinio

Zinio is the world's largest newsstand and bookstore. With its many digital products and services, Zinio creates better ways for people to discover published content, get more of it and do more with it. Now, readers can purchase content once to be read on any screen. Zinio provides the ability to shop for, search inside, read, share and save digital content in 26 local newsstands in any country in the world. Through the Zinio UNITY™ reading platform, readers can move seamlessly within each publication page between text, interactive graphics, animated illustrations, videos and much more. Offering hundreds of thousands of the best digital issues, Zinio's e-stores and applications are revolutionizing reading. Founded in 2001 and privately held, Zinio is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in New York, London, Paris, Barcelona and Taipei.

About Hearst Magazines

Hearst Magazines is a unit of Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com), one of the nation's largest diversified communications companies with interests in magazines, newspapers, digital media, business media and television.  As one of the world's largest publishers of monthly magazines, Hearst Magazines publishes nearly 200 editions around the world, including 14 U.S. titles and 20 magazines in the United Kingdom, published through its wholly owned subsidiary, The National Magazine Company Limited. Hearst Magazines is a leading publisher of monthly magazines in the U.S. in terms of total circulation (ABC June 2010) and reaches 73 million adults (Spring 2010 MRI).

Its digital media unit operates 24 websites and 10 mobile sites for brands such as Cosmopolitan, Popular Mechanics, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire and Seventeen, as well as digital-only sites such as Delish.com, a food site in partnership with MSN; TheDailyGreen.com; MisQuinceMag.com; RealBeauty.com; social shopping site Kaboodle.com; and consumer health site RealAge.com.  Currently, Hearst Magazines has nine iPhone applications; all of its titles are available on the iPad via the Zinio application; and by the end of the year, the company expects to have at least 35 iPhone and iPad applications for its brands.

SOURCE Hot Studio Inc.