SZ Magazin Mobile Augmented Reality Magazine

Challenge

The SZ Magazine is renowned for its creativity and innovation. With the help of AR technology by metaio, iPhone and Android users can enjoy additional multimedia content simply by pointing their smartphone camera at specific magazine articles.

Solution

What started as an article about Augmented Reality ended up as a magazine with Augmented Reality. Several pages throughout the magazine, including the cover, were augmented with additional digital content. Using metaio's mobile Augmented Reality Browser junaio, the users could experience an exciting new form of interactive media.

The cover shows the well known TV personality Sandra Maischberger, hiding behind her raised hands. When viewed through the smartphone's camera, the popular TV host appears smiling cheerfully at the viewer.

Inside is a "photo interview without words" with Lena Meyer-Landrut, winner of the European Eurovision song contest. Using junaio, speech bubbles appear with jibes and comments she couldn't help making during the shooting.

Conclusion

Dr. Dominik Wichmann, editor in chief of the SZ Magazine, comments about the AR special issue: "The SZ Magazine always tries to extend journalistic frontiers. We don't just write about new cultural or technical developments, we practice them. Instead of just reporting on Augmented Reality, we have developed, with the help of metaio, a magazine issue which, for the first time, allows our readers to actually experience this new technology within a journalistic format."

The Süddeutsche Zeitung AR Special was the world's first mobile Augmented Reality magazine and is widely seen as the first, best practice for AR browsers in combination with a user and content provider benefit scenario.