Virgin Group’s iPad-only Project magazine is set to hit the App Store at midnight (technically 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday), a little more than 10 hours ahead of the official launch event being held tomorrow in New York City.
When I last wrote about the magazine, I speculated that Virgin might be launching nothing more than an in-flight magazine designed for the iPad. I was wrong. A newly released clip of the cover, featuring Tron’s Jeff Bridges (above), names design, entertainment, technology and entrepreneurs as its four main subject areas.
A profile of a French record label and Jaguar’s 205mph electric-powered supercar, the C-X75, as well as a 3D tour of “secret” Tokyo, are among the other features promised in the issue.
If Project looks and sounds to you a lot like Wired, you’re right. It appears that Project has indeed modeled itself after the bestselling magazine on the iPad — and smartly so.
As part of the launch (and, no doubt, to build awareness in the design community), Project is holding a competition to redesign the magazine’s cover. Those who are interested in participating will need to locate one of four pasteboard cover replicas touring New York, San Francisco and London this week (their locations will be announced on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla), each of which will hold the coordinates of five USB stick pickup locations. Briefs are contained on the USB sticks. If the magazine somehow gets talented designers to run around those three cities and create dazzling new covers (no monetary reward has yet been disclosed), the winner will then design the front cover of a crowdsourced issue slated for next year.
While I’m not personally wild about the contest (the work should go into the design, in my opinion), I’ll be up tonight waiting for the release of Project and will have a full review for you in the morning.
Let us know what you think of the concept in the meantime. Do you plan to check out Project on the iPad?
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