Page Lizard creates digital publishing for ArtBanc.
If you don’t know your Pissarro’s from your Picasso’s, you’d be forgiven for having not heard of ArtBanc. A company that provide art sales and collections management services for the professional art community. They have some real art bigwigs on board, with a formidable collective number of years experience in dealing with pieces and collections.
However, there’s more to this small group of art buffs than meets the eye. They’ve come up with a great way of utilising digital publishing to reach out to not just their client base, but other interested parties (and potential customers, of course) by creating ‘ArtBanc Market Intelligence’. This is a selection of articles, thought pieces and features collected together in a beautifully-designed magazine which is then freely available for anyone to read. We used ArtBanc as one of our case studies for the C2I seminar entitled ‘Make technology work for your business’, a summary of which can be read here.
ArtBanc Market Intelligence’s credibility as a magazine holds up thanks to the high calibre of expert writers it attracts. With contributors from Sothebys, Herrick Feinstein and Deloitte, the articles range from advice on using Life Insurance to preserve family collections to updates on the Post-War and Contemporary Art Market. Although it is targeted to a very specific audience, its fluid design and accessibility both in print and digital formats will enable ArtBanc to engage the core of the market on a deeper level.
We were able to offer ArtBanc two smart digital publishing solutions to maximise their readership. Our first task was to turn their magazine into a digital book which can be read from computers and devices in much the same way as the print publication. Simple flip-pages, easy navigation of the contents and options to share, print, email and download each edition made it easy for ArtBanc to reach out to new and old readers alike, in some cases simply by attaching a link to each new edition at the bottom of their email signatures. See it in action for yourself by clicking here.
We then worked alongside ArtBanc to develop a custom-built app on which to showcase their magazine. This means that alongside the basic PDF screen view, there is a responsive HTML view specially designed for mobiles and tablets. It also allows interactive elements such as image galleries and videos to be added, enriching the reader experience beyond the print page, playing on the strengths of digital publishing.
We worked carefully from the PDFs to develop a HTML view that reflected the clean, professional layout of the print version. The HTML view also allows a beautiful showcasing of paintings and other images with options to enlarge images or open galleries: a bonus for articles dominated by art images. Although the publication opens automatically in the print view, it is easy to switch into the responsive HTML view by double-tapping articles or tapping the article tabs that pop up down the side.
Time will tell how successful ArtBanc Market Intelligence grows to be, particularly at engaging the art community. Even across the first few issues its design and content has become noticeably more sophisticated, elegant and detailed, so we hope this bodes well for its future.
Visit our membership page to learn about other organisations we provide solutions for, or contact us to learn how we can help you with your move to digital publishing. Alternatively, send us a line on our LinkedIn or Twitter.
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