YouTube founders’ new project will help you publish your own digital magazine

Zeen, the newest project from YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, aims to help normal people make and discover digital magazines.

With our industry’s laser-like focus on gorgeous, magazine-like design, we can see this idea being a huge hit. User interfaces these days — particularly for mobile devices and touchscreens — are all about the glossy print aesthetic. Take a look at Windows 8. Take a look at Flipboard. Take a look at any app with full-screen images and gorgeous typography, and you’ll know what inspired it.

The clean, minimalist, grid-based look and feel of today’s interfaces all hark back to print’s glory days and the biggest of big-budget magazines. So bringing a refreshed, easy-to-DIY version of the digital magazine to consumers is a smart and (more important) a very timely idea.

For now, though, we have relatively few details about how Zeen will work and what Zeen-spawed ‘zines will look like. You can go to the app’s landing page now to reserve a username and connect the account to an email address, Facebook identity, or Twitter account.

Zeen is a product of Avos, Hurley and Chen’s San Mateo, Calif.-based web shop. The company is hiring a small group of visual/UI designers as well as engineers for the project.

hat tip: Fusible

Image courtesy of Sheftsoff, Shutterstock