Quick-response codes are making their way into the next three issues of The Atlantic. Using a smartphone app, print readers will be able to scan select pages of the magazine, giving them access to video interviews and other multimedia content typically only available to website and tablet readers.
The 155-year-old magazine has partnered with Metaio, the company behind augmented reality app Junaio, for the experience. Beginning with the July/Aug "Big Ideas" issue, readers will be prompted to scan pages that contain red "Extras" icons using the app, which is available for free on iPhone and Android devices.
Scanning Anne-Marier Slaughter's cover story, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," will serve up a video interview with The Atlantic's Hanna Rosin; Ed Caesar's story about the Olympics will pull up a photo gallery of past Olympic torchbearers; scanning Mark Bowden's profile of physicist Larry Smarr sends you on a video tour of his laboratory. There are seven add-ons throughout the issue.
Like Esquire's AR-enhanced issues, the initiative invites print readers to interact with the magazine in a new way and gives them a glimpse of the multimedia features The Atlantic produces on its digital properties.
"For years, we and other publishers have been taking magazine stories, bringing them to web and adding extras. What this tech lets you do, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, is access the supplementary content no matter where you are," Bob Cohn, editor of The Atlantic's digital division, observed in an interview with Mashable.
A red icon prompts readers to scan the page for additional content.
The only drawback to the experience is the advertising. Readers must either interact with or skip a quiz-based ad from Prudential every single time they scan a page. The ad itself is smart, as far as interactive display ads go; but I wish I hadn't had to load and skip it seven times. Either it should have appeared once, or a rotation of several different ads should have appeared.
I asked Cohn why the publication decided to do partner with Metaio instead of setting up its own system using QR Codes or Microsoft Smart Tags, and why, since the technology has been available for some time now, The Atlantic didn't do a QR-activated issue before now. The answer, in short, is that Metaio came to The Atlantic with the idea, and Cohn and his team eagerly took it up.
When prompted, Cohn said he could see quick-response add-ons becoming a permanent part of The Atlantic's print reading experience, should the test period prove successful.
Update: An earlier version of this story referred to this as an augmented reality — rather than quick-response — initiative. Thanks to Stephen Abbott for the correction.
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