Great news! Fry Communications, one of the largest and oldest publishers in the United States, announced today that it has chosen Layar as its augmented reality and interactive print platform of choice. Fry will offer Layar to its customers looking to add interactivity to print products.

We are thrilled to be working with one of the most respected names in publishing. As the world’s leading augmented reality and interactive print provider, we are excited to team up with Fry and bring interactive print to even more publications and readers in 2013 and beyond.

As augmented reality and interactive print are helping the print industry increase value for readers and advertisers, we’re increasingly seeing more publications and publishers align with Layar as their provider of choice. In the end, Layar’s stability, strong product offering and pricing is attracting the industries biggest names.

“We chose Layar because it provides the best user experience with the most robust technology, as well as a transparent pricing structure that publishers and marketeers can trust,” said David Fry, Chief Technology Officer at Fry. “Layar is absolutely focused on leveraging the lasting business value of the augmented reality technology for printers and publishers.”

Fry Communications isn’t the first big printer to team up with Layar. Last year, Senefelder Misset, one of the top Dutch printers, similarly partnered with Layar to offer augmented reality and interactivity to its publications. Printers love Layar because it increases reader engagement, positions the printer as an innovative market player and generates new revenue and e-commerce opportunities.

Fry joins a growing list of printers and publishers signing on with Layar, and there’s more to come! To learn more about the partnership, check out Fry’s press release here.

The medical journal Neurosurgery, published by international professional health publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, has integrated Layar into the pages of its journal to enhance the reading experience.

The official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (which publishes over 3,000 pages of content each year), felt it wise to keep up with its reputation as the “most complete window on the contemporary field of neurosurgery” by implementing augmented reality into its pages. After all, the field of neurosurgery already makes us of AR technology in the operating room.

We spoke with managing editor Duncan MacRae about the experience of adding interactive print to Neurosurgery.

“We had a vision of how we wanted to link our print product with supplemental digital content, and we knew that QR codes would be a stepping stone, rather than a permanent solution,” says MacRae. “Since our usage would be based on visual recognition, rather than GPS, the release of Layar Creator was really the breakthrough we were waiting for.”

“Layar Creator has been extremely easy to use, and most importantly, the metrics provided are excellent,” he adds. “Our investment of time in creating new pages is embarrassingly small, considering that we utilize web links, videos, emails, and social media actions on almost all of our augmented images.”

So far, a handful of ads for Neurosurgery content have been activated using Layar. MacRae says going forward, they will incorporate more interactive print into commercial ads and editorial content.

“We have spent the last three months showcasing the technology to our regular stable of print advertisers,” says MacRae. “Any added value that we can provide to an advertiser gives us an advantage over our competitor publications.”

“As the journal becomes a more interactive product, the opportunities to link our print content with our online educational activities helps us better fulfill the educational mission of the journal.”

On July 11th, Layar is hosting a seminar in Amsterdam for members of the media and publishing industries. This seminar will introduce the Layar Creator and interactive print, providing an opportunity for anyone interested in the Layar Creator to see an in-depth presentation and try it out themselves.

The event is free and kicks off at 1:30pm. Check out more info (in Dutch) below or click here to register right now!

Woensdagmiddag 11 juli a.s. organiseert Layar, wereldmarktleider in augmented reality en interactive print een seminar voor uitgevers, redacteuren en print professionals die meer toegevoegde waarde willen leveren aan hun lezers en adverteerders. Op het seminar leer je hoe makkelijk je print kunt combineren met digitaal, wat de toegevoegde waarde voor lezers is en hoe het meer biedt aan adverteerders.

De hoofdredacteur Jildou van der Bijl van LINDA en de Interactive Paper Maker Leonieke Verhoog van VPRO delen hun ervaringen en lessen in Interactieve Print. Ontmoet de experts van Layar en leer anderen collega’s kennen die reeds begonnen zijn of gaan beginnen. Het event is kosteloos, er is echter beperkte ruimte dus registreer snel!

Neem een laptop en de PDF van jouw laatste uitgave mee zodat deze tijdens de seminar, begeleid door onze experts, verrijkt kan worden.

Read our full press release here!

Many months of hard work have finally brought us to this moment, so today we here at Layar are beyond excited to finally introduce to you … the Layar Creator.

If you’ve followed our recent activity, you already know that we’ve partnered time and again with magazine and newspaper publishers to help enhance the static pages of their publications with digital content. We aided publishers by offering to produce these layers ourselves, but what you may not have known is that some of our more recent projects have been built completely by the publishers themselves.

The last two issues of LINDA. Magazine, including the L’HOMO issue, all enhanced with dozens of buttons? They did that. The vtwonen magalogue with all of its “Buy” buttons? They did it all themselves as well. The same goes for the latest Eppo comic from Senefelder, the VPRO Gids, the NRC.next newspaper and more.

So how did they manage to build augmented reality layers and make their print interactive without any external development assistance? The answer, simply, is the Layar Creator.

Check out some screenshots of the Creator! Click the thumbnails to view larger photos.

The Layar Creator is a self-service web application for activating print pages with digital AR content. Now anyone can upload images or PDFs, drag-and-drop any of a number of digital buttons onto the pages and publish them on the Layar platform - all in a matter of seconds. No fancy code work needed, no developers. Absolutely anybody can do it.

There’s no software to install, and the Layar Creator’s intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to start activating pages right away. The Layar Creator takes advantage of Layar Vision technology, recognizing existing images from the pages of magazines and newspapers without the need for special markers like QR codes.

How to use the Layar Creator:

“I loved how simple it was to use the Layar Creator with our magazine,” says Monique van Beekhoven, web editor for Sanoma Media’s vtwonen magazine. Using their smartphones, readers could instantly order items in the magazine by tapping “Buy” buttons placed on the pages with the Layar Creator by Monique herself. “I really believe that anyone can do it!”

As we explained in our whitepaper on the subject a few weeks ago, early interactive print campaigns with the Layar Creator have already shown promising results. Roughly 1% of readers who discover activated pages are converted from print to digital by using Layar to interact with the pages. And on average, 20% of all digital content displayed in print through Layar is clicked by the viewer.

Having seen these results, several publishers have already signed on to incorporate the Layar Creator into their publishing process going forward. And with such a low barrier to entry, who can blame them?

“At every editorial meeting, we discuss what will be in the printed magazine and how we can connect that content with Layar,” says Jildou van der Bijl, editor-in-chief of LINDA. Magazine, which has already published three issues with pages activated using the Layar Creator.

Today, anyone can get started using the Layar Creator and all of its features for free. Starting August 1st, pricing for top level features will kick in, but for now, anything you create before then will never be charged. A free, ad-supported tier for the Creator will remain as well.

So, please, be our guest! Give the Layar Creator a try and tell us what you think! We hope you’re as excited as we are.

We’re excited to announce that Layar 6.0 including Vision is now available in the App Store, just in time for iPhone users to experience the awesome AR content in the latest issue of LINDA. magazine.

LINDA., the largest women’s glossy in the Netherlands, partnered with Layar to create the first Dutch augmented magazine, showing infotainment and commerce to be a natural fit with augmented reality.

More than 50 pages inside this month’s edition of LINDA. magazine have been augmented with digital buttons that enable readers to access additional digital content using their smartphones. These buttons link to specific websites, videos, app stores and phone numbers.

A total of 120 augments can be found throughout the magazine for readers to view and interact with.

 Some examples from the magazine include: 

• Unique backstage video footage of the cover shoot
• One-click access to sites selling the fashion featured in the articles
• The ability to book a test drive for the advertised cars

“We are thrilled LINDA. wanted to work with us and use Layar,” said Claire Boonstra, Layar co-founder. “Not just because it is a great magazine, but it proves what we said with the launch of Layar Vision; this is a utility that generates value for brands, retailers and online merchants by making physical items interactive.”

Watch the video to see LINDA.‘s pages come to life with Augmented Reality.

Read more »