Weblog

Wednesday Wow: Daily Telegraph iPhone app/site

Posted in: Case Studies, Mobile, Technology, by: John Duncan

Mar 25, 2009
12:59 PM

The Daily Telegraph will go down as one of the most remarkable reinventions of the UK press. While the Guardian laboured under a reputation as the knit-your-own-mung-beans crowd, the Telegraph was equally saddled with being the paper for the old colonels and retired city bankers, forever railing against foreigners and the modern world. But since Will Lewis became editor it has clawed its way to the top of the UK newspaper web charts where the Guardian had sat like Mull of Kintyre for the past millennium. Now they can lay claim to the very coolest newspaper app/site for the iPhone. It’s so good I almost want to pay for it.

The problem with newspaper iPhone apps is that they are either based on a design that suits other cellphone mobile formats like the Tampa Tribune with plain blue linked text and too-small for the finger links and headings, or you get apps that use tiny unreadable grey type on white and try to cram too much navigation onto a small screen.

The Telegraph has avoided all these problems to come up with a design that is simple, quick, legible and attractive.

On first impression of the icon, you get a pretty blue screen and a rotating Old Century T. It has a solid black background which makes the section headings easy to read and it lists one screen’s worth of section headings with readable text and neat uncluttered logos. They don’t overcomplicate the design or try to cram too much in.

When you click through to a section you get the spinning T again and are told that a number of stories are being downloaded. This is I suspect a lie, but oddly it makes me feel comforted. Psychologically the thought of large amounts of material being downloaded to my phone makes me feel I’m actually getting something.

You get two story summaries on a page in a font size that is legible (white on black) and each story has a pretty “in full” button that is easy to hit but doesn’t overhwelm the story headline. When the full text comes up you get the black on white text in a reasonable size, though one weakness is that you can’t force the text larger by reading in landscape (which is how the Guardian does it).

It’s intuitive, simple, attractive and functional, an app worthy of the iPhone. Wow.