Wired loses creative director, iPad sales strong

John Koblin of Women’s Wear Daily has an update on Wired magazine’s strong iPad sales, and the loss of its creative director.

Koblin writes, “Condé Nast ‘It’ boy Scott Dadich has resigned as creative director at Wired to focus full time on his other gig as the company’s executive director of digital-magazine development. Dadich got his corporate job back in July and has divided his time over the last three months, designing the print edition of Wired at its San Francisco offices and tutoring magazine editors at 4 Times Square in New York on how to merge their print products with those mysterious and magical digital devices.

“Dadich, who Condé executives are banking on to yank the company into the New Media era, helped the publisher forge a relationship with Adobe, which has been used to design apps for tablet devices. So far, Adobe has helped create the Wired and New Yorker iPad apps, while magazines like Vanity Fair, GQ and Glamour have been working with Condé Nast Digital. Sources have said the Adobe track is becoming the preferred one among Condé Nast executives — meaning future apps will likely use that platform.

“And just how are those digital issues performing? After Wired’s enormous first month in June, when it sold 100,000 copies — an even better result than the usual 76,000 it sells off the newsstand — sales have been about a quarter of that. In July and August, the Wired iPad app sold 31,000 and 28,000 copies, respectively, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report. A Wired spokeswoman confirmed the magazine has sold an average of roughly 30,000 copies since the June release.”

Read more here.