Design proposal · 1 September 2026

The ZinUp Reader

What a reader sees. No annotations, no jargon — just the screens.

The reader

Strong Words, issue 63. This is what someone opening the magazine sees.

The reader feed on desktop: a lead story with photograph, listen and language controls, then a briefs section
On a computer. One address at the top. Feed and Pages are two ways of reading the same issue.
The same reader feed on a phone
On a phone. Same issue, rearranged — not a separate design.

An article, open

An article open, showing the text with reading tools alongside
Listen, translate and the printed page are all here, and it always says which article they apply to.

The archive

The archive shelf showing issue covers
Every issue. Search it, ask it a question, read it in another language, listen to it.

Choosing an article’s shape

The layout picks itself from the photograph and the length of the piece. A publisher can override it, and mostly won’t.

The Studio layout picker showing six shapes as small diagrams with Auto selected
Six shapes, shown as pictures. Auto is where every article starts.

A publisher with no scanned pages

A newspaper archive of 1,204 editions with no scans, cards built from typography
A newspaper with 1,204 editions and no scans. No feed, no page view — and it still reads as a finished product.

What I think is still wrong

The feed doesn’t show enough variety
You asked for lead, two-across and two-stack rows giving the page rhythm. What is shown is a lead and then briefs — no two-across row at all. So the single most important thing you asked for is the thing this does not yet demonstrate. That is the next fix.
Empty space under the lead
There is still a gap beneath the left-hand column on the lead story. Less than before, not gone.

Still yours to settle

Round photographs of people
No bubbles — does that extend to headshots? Browsing an archive by writer is a strong feature we don’t have today.