“Martha Stewart Living” Releases Special Issue for the iPad

To celebrate the publication’s 20th anniversary in print, Martha Stewart Living has released a “special digital issue” for the iPad.

The $3.99 app [iTunes link] features all-original content, ranging from the publication’s signature arts and crafts how-tos (including, conveniently, a “How to Use This Issue”), cooking and baking recipes, makeup tips, a photography-rich profile of the publication’s namesake and video tour of her garden, and more — not found in any print edition.

It’s everything you’d expect from a tablet version of the polished print magazine: The app is teeming with vivid photographs, and the publication’s layout designers have rendered the magazine’s harmonic pastel palette even more beautiful on the iPad. The designers deserve special applause for the cover, which features 180 still-motion slides of a blooming peony photographed over a 10-hour period, and for the edition’s scrollable layouts, such as the one in the “Seasonal Sparkle” feature, which transcends the confines of the single-page layout.

All accomplishments withstanding, there’s a few things that could have been done better. The text is not selectable and there is no avenue for sharing the content in the app via e-mail or social networks. Interactivity is limited to swiping between pages, tabbing through photo galleries, and clicking “play” on embedded videos. The video for the makeover piece was not embedded in the app but rather linked to the magazine’s website, where the video is not yet available. The ads, which are relatively numerous, are by and large uninteresting, and improve on print ads and TV commercials only by including links to advertisers’ websites and Facebook Pages.

Martha Stewart Living will begin publishing regular monthly editions for the iPad beginning with the February issue, according to a spokesperson for the publication. Martha Stewart released a cookie recipe app for the device just last week.