Print meets QR – a review of Spektacle

Not too long ago, I was pleased to receive the new issue of Spektacle, a fashion magazine that plays with different technology-friendly formats. I’ve been keeping an eye on them since 2001, when the first edition came out on a mini CD-ROM with a free, sliced-up piece of vinyl.

The latest issue uses QR codes in a more integrated way than any magazine I’ve seen. Some say that QR codes – a piece of technology where you use your mobile phone camera to snap a square monochrome image that then connects you to a website or other information, much like a barcode – are part of new, interactive future for print. It has yet to take off in Europe or the States as it has in Japan, being mostly reserved in the west for the corner of billboard advertisements. But in the context of Spektacle, is it any good?

Then as now, Spektacle is the creation of John Noi, a London-based American with an MA in Fashion Journalism from Central St Martins. Appearing irregularly, it has always tried to experiment with combinations of physical magazine formats and upcoming technology. Their previous issue was a PDF of a fake, idealized town brochure, also filled with QR codes. The new edition, on paper with a free old vinyl record (nice nod to their launch there), continues the QR-based theme, specifically instructing people to use an iPhone to view the linked-to content. In the spirit of synchronicity, I also used my iPhone to snap the slightly blurry photos.

The tagline is “contemporary culture on the page and off”, though in truth it’s more of a neighbourhood fashion magazine for london. The first thing to say is that the vinyl disc on the front cover is a neat touch – and the QR code on its label links to this issue’s recommended music videos (which unfortunately don’t work here in the US, but this is a European-distributed magazine, so I’ll forgive them). The second thing to say is that the vinyl disc has been stapled into place using a big plastic screw that’s hard to remove, and prevents anyone from flicking through the mag. It’s also a bit of a pain to remove.

Once you’ve found a nearby blunt implement to open the thing, inside you find a neatly, albeit unremarkably, designed magazine. The magazine is divided into nine themes – rather a lot for a 36-page mag, to be honest – and the themes don’t seem to be arranged in any particular order, making it a slightly disjointed read. As it’s such a short one, however, that doesn’t grate as much as it could.

On the positive side, the print quality is lovely, its use of colours deliberately sensible, the photography portfolios are well chosen and striking, and at its best, Spektacle succeeds in integrating the QR codes in a clear and advantageous way, such as this piece on the left here.

The app that they recommend to use (NeoReader) is also easy to install via Spektacle’s mobile-specific site, and easy to use.

Unfortunately, the codes themselves often visually dominate the page, without being attractive. This is almost certainly because of the quality of the iPhone 3G camera, which greatly limits the detail that the free iPhone app scanner can pick up. (This seems to have been fixed with the 3GS). Low lighting or an unsteady hand, such as on a train, say, also limits its usage.

Another issue I have with QR codes in general is that they deliberately take you away from the world of the magazine, and onto the iPhone – where other distractions, such as your email and the cricket score, reside. And finally, in order to snap them, I have to be bothered to pull out my phone, load the app, snap the code, click “use” if it does find the code, and then wait for the browser to load the link, via couple of redirects.

In order to persuade me to do that, Spektacle needs to provide clear advantages that I’ll receive in return for that effort in each case, and mostly, it doesn’t do that. Codes are captioned more as sidebar links than essential clicking (“snap this code to learn more” is mostly the command) and so such a major feature of the magazine hasn’t persuaded me to interact with it. (Plus a minor technical gripe: Spektacle uses is.gd for is shortened urls; it would be much better if they used a customizable service such as bit.ly, so that readers would be sure, from the moment they scanned, that the phone had picked up the right QR code.)

There is quite a neat usage of QR for the reader-answered problem page, but as that is also accessible through Spektacle’s own homepage on a proper computer, it makes me wonder why I should bother fiddling with my iPhone keyboard to take part.

Another missed opportunity came with the vinyl disc. In order to attach it, a hole was drilled through the entire issue. That hole interrupts the reading experience, and spoils some of the photography. In 2000, Nest laser-etched a small cross throughout their issue, and then designed around it on every spread, making it a feature. I longed for just one design in Spektacle to do the same with their self-imposed wound.

I also wanted more playfulness with the QR codes – there’s some really fun and interesting experimentation going on with those in Japan. I don’t know if the same would work here, but some attempts to do more than just stick the QR in an indentikit box would at least break the rhythm in a pleasing way.

In his editor’s welcome letter, John Noi states that the magazine is “the first to be doing what we’re doing now, not only in the UK but abroad too.” (Well, kind of.) This puts them in a great position not just to use this new technology, but actually to define some of the most creative ways that it could be applied. The problem is that if they can’t excite us with the possibilities of QR codes, then perhaps nobody will, making them soon enough both the first and last to do what they’re doing, no longer a worthwhile boast.

Overall, I think that Spektacle is aiming for the right areas, and picking up on the right kinds of technological leaps, but it needs to be more remarkable in everything it does, from editorial to design, to make people take notice – especially for a self-proclaimed cutting-edge fashion magazine,

I’ll continue to watch Spektacle‘s development with a great deal of interest (they claim bimonthly frequency, but the next issue is already overdue). They’ve suggested that they are groundbreaking – the next step is to achieve it.