French Luxury Magazine Expands with an App available in Static and Interactive Versions; will be available Globally in Eight Languages

DENVER, CO - Quark Software Inc. today announced the availability of the L’APPART app, an interactive iPhone and iPad app version of the French luxury magazine. Each month L’APPART provides readers from around the globe the latest news about property, design, hotels, palaces, watches and automobiles. In addition to a range of articles, the new interactive app will feature videos, audio, slideshows, Web links and 360° views as well as geolocation and online reservation features. Read more here or read the full case study.

The monthly magazine was founded in 2009 by Editorial Director Lydie Madonna and Publication Director Julien Madonna. It presents property, locations, architects, designers and outstanding brands from the four corners of the globe. With its aim of acting as a mouthpiece for the most fashionable artists, the magazine also offers pages dedicated to the names and brands that are building luxury in the 21st century. Designers, architects and stylists from across the world are able to enjoy their time in the spotlight within L’APPART, which describes their journey, visions and achievements.

Julien explains, “We designed the magazine to meet the demand from our 750,000 readers to find the latest trends in design, watches and automobiles as they search for outstanding purchases.” Fashionable through and through, L’APPART is even fashionable in its format thanks to an interactive app fully developed in QuarkXPress 10® and App Studio.

QuarkXPress 10: The Clear Choice
L’APPART, which is entering its sixth year of publication, has always been produced with QuarkXPress. “We continue to choose QuarkXPress to create L’APPART, for historical reasons and because it offers us functionality that suits our requirements,” explained Julien. In 2013 Quark launched App Studio, which led Julien and Lydie to consider the many opportunities and benefits of going digital. “L’APPART is available in palaces, spa reception areas and other luxury establishments. By producing an interactive, digital magazine we can now reach beyond the print version as well as satisfy requests from our advertisers.”

Entrusted to an external studio, the first attempt to produce the L’APPART app was not satisfactory. “The app was only a static PDF version of the magazine, which was not particularly interesting and, above all, it did not sync with the high-quality image of our print magazine,” said Julien.

As Publication Director, Julien therefore chose to bring production in-house, leveraging QuarkXPress 10 and App Studio on the advice of Vincent Drouot, a digital publishing trainer. “In light of Julien’s needs, his attachment to QuarkXPress and the potential offered by version 10 and App Studio, it was clear L’APPART should move forward with Quark to create an open and rich app that would appeal to their target readers.”

Complete Control of Creation
One of the challenges of producing L’APPART is that it does not have a single templated layout design. “Each month we change the layout depending on the editorial focus, which means the template changes from one issue to the next,” explained Julien.

“The new Xenon graphics engine is one of QuarkXPress 10’s major updates. Its flexibility and responsiveness mean that layouts can be changed quickly; you can add high-definition images and in real-time ensure the output will be impeccable,” said Drouot.

“The software is fluid, with a very well-designed user experience that is accessible whether or not you are a technician. The benefit of using both QuarkXPress 10 and App Studio is that designers are able to work within a familiar interface to easily extend their design skills to produce digital apps. Furthermore, the HTML5 enrichment palette – the most important element of App Studio – is very intuitive and allows designers to work in project mode, which lets them manage the print, digital and interactive versions in one file,” continued Drouot.

Available in the App Store, L’APPART offers an enriched reading experience with clear buttons offering readers the ability to obtain more content related to articles and advertisements, including audio and video files, 360° images of products, slideshows and more.

“For our clients in the hotel sector, we also offer geolocation functions and online reservation forms which are available directly via the magazine,” explains Julien. “It is even possible to make an appointment with an automobile salesman to test drive a vehicle.” In production terms, the print magazine is finalized in four days and, Julien explains, “We need less than a day to generate the two versions of the app, with all its interactive capabilities. This is an enormous time-savings which allows us to concentrate even more on the creative dimension.”

“We truly appreciated Quark‘s responsiveness to meet our demands. In one month we were able to be trained on the new tools and to move smoothly to a high-quality app, without interrupting our production flow,” said Julien.

Today, L’APPART offers readers the printed magazine along with an interactive app available in two versions: static and interactive. Soon L’APPART will be available in the App Store in eight languages: French (France, Canada), English (United Kingdom, United States, Canada), Mandarin (China), Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil). “This requires maximum automation of our production process and we will utilize the App Studio digital publishing platform to refine the logistics of production.”