The Mario Blog

02.23.2011—9pm    Post #1100
What’s cooking in the iPad? Try the new Martha Stewart food mag

TAKEAWAY: The iPad now has food smudged all over its never-too-clean screen. Indeed, what cooking is hot and it is the new Martha Stewart Food Magazine. This is exactly what the iPad can do best: the new app is as full of delicious pop ups as anyone can hope for. Now, if you are like me, putting off learning how to cook, you are one step closer to starting your lessons. PLUS: When color purrs like a kitten

Updated Thursday, Feb. 24, Beirut, Lebanon, 21:44

TAKEAWAY: The iPad now has food smudged all over its never-too-clean screen. Indeed, what cooking is hot and it is the new Martha Stewart Food Magazine. This is exactly what the iPad can do best: the new app is as full of delicious pop ups as anyone can hope for. Now, if you are like me, putting off learning how to cook, you are one step closer to starting your lessons. PLUS: When color purrs like a kitten

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It is one of my dreams: to learn how to cook. I always put it off till the next “quiet period” in my life. Today, at 64, it is beginning to look like I will probably enroll in cooking class whenever I am ready to retire (big secret). My mom, who died last August, was the ultimate chef with great expertise in Cuban cuisine. She tried unsuccessfully to teach me how to make some of her wonderful recipes. While she had no success with me, she succeeded with both my daughters Ana and Elena, who were very apt and quick pupils. It is through them that I can still enjoy Mom’s world famous oxtail (rabo encendido), or her flan caramel. As for me, Mom got me as far as teaching me how to make white rice and how to fry an egg. In case you are not familiar with the Cuban palate, there is nothing more satisfying, especially on a rainy day, than a fried egg over steaming white rice or arroz con huevo frito.

But, alas, along comes Martha Stewart’s announcement that her Everyday Food Magazine App for iPad is now available on the App Store. I thank dear friend Bob Newman , the great magazine designer, for alerting me to it in an email this morning. Thanks, Bob.

The app may actually move me to action, straight into the kitchen and straight to the more advanced levels beyond the fried egg and rice routine. The iPad is such an ideal platform for food preparation, and this Martha Stewart app takes cooking with the help of the new gadget to the next delicious level. The recipes are easy and innovative, but so are the features and functionality of the app. Cooking lessons include videos, slide shows, audio, animation, recipes that scroll. And I can send best friend Annie a great cookie making recipe. Of course, you can shop directly from it: want to get that special cinnamon that is only sold in a specialized store, go place your order now.

I suspect that food/wine will be among the most popular and serviceable apps out there for the tablets. We, too, prepare now to conduct a workshop for a major food magazine that wants to take its test kitchen right into the iPad.

For more information:

The January/February issue is complimentary, and it includes 74-email ready recipes, and 14 videos.

The Martha Stewart Everyday Food Magazine App, with complimentary January/February issue, is available for free from the App Store on iPad or at www.iTunes.com/AppStore.

Individual issues, including the current March issue, will be available for $2.99 through In-App Purchase.

The subject was color

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Fun with color in those pill box logos for The Washington Post’s new Sunday Style section; five colors are part of the palette, surprising the reader each week

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Interesting interaction of orange and red for the logo of Al Shabiba, of Oman

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Color and type: a perfect combination to bring an accent and highlight the words

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Color palette created for our project, Moscovskiye Novosti, with the help of colleague Dr. Pegie Stark Adam

My dear colleague Dr. Pegie Stark Adam, finds herself preparing a lecture on her specialty, color, and asked me to send her samples of my most recent work. I did, with gusto, and her note made me think about color and the excitement of using it these days. I share my thoughts with you:

It is an exciting time, especially for color. I experiment with it everyday, treat it as a little kitten that never grows, purrs when you touch it and when you squeeze it. Each project brings a new energy to how color can be used: I use it as conversation in summaries, the intonations that a good red or green can bring to a well written sentence; or I use it bold and orange for a sports headline (shout like the fans), or I go mutely pastely with Arabic type, for a world where there is too much shouting color (and real shouting, too) outside, so the newspaper they hold should bring the peace the people in the region long for. The days of color only on photos are over. And, oh, in the iPad: the perfect canvas for color, no worries about the old printer not giving you the right color for grapes or tangerines.

Il Secolo mini poster and the Libyan unrest

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The front page of today’s Il Secolo XIX; mini poster, lead headline reads Libya’s Cemetery

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Design director Massimo Gentile, of Il Secolo XIX (Genoa, Italy) sends us front pages of Il Secolo for the past two days, using the mini poster concept to cluster information related to coverage of the Libyan crisis.

For previous TheMarioBlog posts on mini posters use on page one:

Il Secolo XIX’s mini poster prototypes
https://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/il_secolo_xixs_mini_poster_prototypes

More about those mini posters
https://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/oslos_sydost_and_a_recipe_for_passion

A day for follow ups on mini posters/logos
https://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/a_day_for_follow_ups_on_mini_posters_logos/

Today’s pop ups

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It was a big football game in Germany last night, and this is how Bild highlighted it on the iPad edition

TheMarioBlog post #718

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