Quartz Goes ​“Mobile-Native”

Launched just over four years ago, Quartz is a digital publisher of news that aims to present readers with a truly world view. Focused on the business world, qz​.com is targeted primarily at mobile devices; two thirds of Quartz readers access the service on their phone. Originally released in 2016, Quartz Index is a form of digital storytelling that transcends web sites, or news feeds, and enters the realms of Time, or National Geographic, by embracing its medium using videos, interaction, and easily digestible stats. 

Read about the world’s longest flight, the one job destroyed by automation, or why Brazil’s 0% GDP growth is actually good. — Zach Seward, SVP of product and executive editor, Quartz 

This week Quartz have unveiled an ambitious and highly successful redesign of the Index service. It is visually striking, easy to interact with, and highly addictive. You can tap, and swipe through stories in a way that is perfectly intuitive. (Of course, the service also works on desktop if that’s your preference, but it’s simply beautiful on a mobile device.)  The most interesting aspect of what Quartz are doing with Index, from a web professional’s point of view, is moving beyond mobile-first. Mobile-first is widely regarded as the best way to style content for the web, but so often it’s a case of simply scaling desktop content down to a smaller viewport. The whole approach of Quartz Index, is mobile centric.  A product of its time, Quartz adopted mobile-first as soon as it was conceived, but with this latest iteration of Index the team behind the build began using the phrase ​“mobile-native”.

In designing this new version of Index, we challenged ourselves to go beyond mobile-first, which has guided most decisions at Quartz from the beginning. — Zach Seward, SVP of product and executive editor, Quartz 

Quartz tells stories digitally, in a format that feels like a stripped down Sunday supplement. With videos, stats, and bite-sized content to draw you into the zeitgeist, it feels like the perfect approach for our time. With so many media outlets mimicking print, or broadcast techniques, Quartz Index succeeds by embracing the interaction, and the flow, of the web.