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New iTunes Design Specifications

I just received an email from iTunes U Support advising that they are changing the rules for assets in the near future. The file type requirements seem to be overkill (See: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/itc/docs/itunes-design-specs.html) Anyone care to comment on this? Additionally, we made the requested changes, but I can't figure out how to upload the replacenment images (in Public Site Manager). Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

iTunes U-OTHER

Posted on Nov 13, 2012 1:23 PM

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Posted on Nov 13, 2012 2:24 PM

Greetings;

I'm taking a "wait and see" approach to this. The graphic requirements listed in the new sprecifcations seem to have very little to do with the iTunes U Public Site Manager design as we know it at this point. Hopefully we'll have more PSM specific design info coming. All the best...


Syd Rodocker

Apple iTunes U Administrator

Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

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Question marked as Best reply

Nov 13, 2012 2:24 PM in response to uwp_tim

Greetings;

I'm taking a "wait and see" approach to this. The graphic requirements listed in the new sprecifcations seem to have very little to do with the iTunes U Public Site Manager design as we know it at this point. Hopefully we'll have more PSM specific design info coming. All the best...


Syd Rodocker

Apple iTunes U Administrator

Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

Nov 30, 2012 6:33 AM in response to Paul Otteson

Greetings All;

With the release of iTunes 11 yesterday, Apple seems to have "leveled the playing field" as far as graphics are concerned. Although the individual collection artwork remains, the unique and individual graphic look for each institution's provider page has been replaced with the generic Apple interface. Thoughts? Comments?


Syd Rodocker

Apple iTunes U Administrator

Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

Dec 6, 2012 10:51 AM in response to uwp_tim

I can't make any sense of the new design specifications. I've created the 3200x600px artwork and added it via the Provider Art option in the Provider Configuration Page but it looks awful in iTunes 11 on the desktop. It looks way too small because it’s 3200px wide but only 994px can be used for institution logo/artwork.


I understand the logic of having one piece of artwork for multiple devices but we use a plain white background so on desktop iTunes11 we end up with acres of white space and a tiny banner in the middle.


If I don't specify artwork we don't get any institution branding in iOS6 and iTunes11, which to be honest might be the lesser of two evils because the 'one size fits all' artwork looks ridiculously small on desktop iTunes11.


More generally I have some major issues with iTunes11, in particular the omission of vertical column browsers, and all this aggravation with provider artwork is making me dislike it even more!


Tom

Dec 6, 2012 11:16 AM in response to uwp_tim

Also, the design specification does not specify the exact dimensions of the text/logo safe area. There is a naviation bar at the top of iTunes but it does not mention how many pixels from the top of the image should be reserved for this area.


It says "Texts or logos should not exceed the Minimum View of 994 pixels and should not exceed 400 pixels in height" but 400px + 200px (for the tag area at the bottom) would take up the entire height. Yet the example image clearly shows that the text/logo safe area begins well below the top of the image presumably to allow space for the navigation bar.


So assuming we don't want logos and images obscured by the naviagtion bar how much space should we leave at the top?


I'm confused! 😕

Dec 6, 2012 1:40 PM in response to Tom-Williams

Greetings Tom;

I created our logo using the 3200px by 600px guidelines in PSM and ignored all of the other specs. It's certainly different and more confining than the previous configuration (see attached), but it's better than the generic look that you get without Provider-specific artwork.


Also, the Tagged Collections and individual Collections theme artwork has now been replaced with a generic look. And the custom URL feature seems to have disappeared as well.


Apple is taking PSM offline for a week this month. Perhaps we'll have some answers after that!


User uploaded file

All the best to everyone....

Syd Rodocker

Apple iTunes U Administrator

Tennessee's Electronic Learning Center

Apr 24, 2013 10:31 AM in response to uwp_tim

I have just revisited this and while I have managed to find a compromise it doesn’t look very elegant. The canvas size of the image is 3200x600 but the area available for institution logo/artwork is only 994x600 and this has to be in the centre of the canvas. Of this 200px at the bottom is reserved for the tag area.


https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browsev2/lse.ac.uk-dz


Our banner design uses a plain white background so I end up with tons of empty white space and a rather small logo/design in the middle. It looks especially bad on the desktop version of iTunes with a widescreen monitor. I could make the design larger so it looks better on desktop iTunes but if I do that the image is cropped on iPhone/iPad which is even worse. Whatever I do the design is compromised.


I understand the logic of trying to hit all devices with a single banner image but ultimately I think it would be much easier if we could upload a different image for desktop iTunes, iPad and iPhone. That would afford us the option to customise our banner design to fit the available screen real estate of each device.


We could completely re-design our banner, of course, so that it works better with the new banner spec but that’s a heck of a lot of work for no discernable benefit. Besides Apple may decide to change the spec again in the future and then we’d be back to square one.



btw – Syd, I think you have the same problem that I ran into. Your banner looks fine on desktop but it’s cropped on iPad (in portrait) and iPhone. To avoid this the design needs to go in the centre of the 3200x600 canvas and can be no larger than 994x600 of which 200px at the bottom is reserved for the tag area.

Apr 26, 2013 9:23 AM in response to Tom-Williams

I should add that the banner only looks bad on iTunes 11, on iTunes 10 it looks fine but that's because iTunes 10 uses our old banner which is a different size and isn't hobbled by the comprimises we had to make for the new banner specification. There again there are quite a few things that work much better in iTunes 10 in my humble opinion, but that's another story...

New iTunes Design Specifications

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