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.