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Oh, you do graphic design? So does my iPhone.
Next up: the InDesign plugin that turns photos and text into layout, and the Word macro that writes SEO-friendly punning headlines. And then in ten years’ time, people will be taken out of the equation altogether, and it’ll just be iPhones quietly talking to each other.
(or should the title be “HyPed?”)
Some early thoughts about the iPad:
- It’s surprisingly cheap. I don’t know for sure, but the price does suggest that it’s following the games console model: make a loss on the machine, make your money on the games (or in this case, the apps), and try to dominate the market. The appstore has been hugely successful for them, so that would make sense. And unless Amazon can drop the Kindle to $99, e-ink will soon be sent back to the lab, to work on a proper colour screen.
- It’s what we expected. Back to the video game analogy, the dual-screen Nintendo DS forced publishers to rethink the fundamentals of the game-playing experience. This doesn’t take us anywhere we didn’t expect to go, which is onto giant iPhones. That said, it’s easy to overlook how much multi-touch has already revolutionised interface design.
- 3G+WiFi+easily stealable+limited capacity = The inexorable rise of The Cloud. No bad thing, as long as it never goes down.
- Mid-level software publishers will struggle – $9.99 seems to be a top price limit for most iPhone apps. No reason to think the iPad will be different, particularly as it runs most iPhone apps.
- No word on subscription models for publications yet. Bit early perhaps, but it will need to come, and soon.
- If I were a peripheral manufacturer, the first thing I’d make is a rubber keyboard with force feedback and a strap around the back, to slip over that touchscreen keyboard. Even Jobs couldn’t type straight on it in the demo. Shouldn’t be too difficult, and will be an instant winner.
- The second thing I’d make is a Bluetooth-enabled pair of spectacles with a mini monitor overlay, and a Bluetooth-enabled glove (containing mini gyroscopes and acting as a mouse), to do the tapping and viewing without needing the pad in front of me. It would also have the benefit of making me think that Minority Report had finally come true. Now where did I leave those precogs?
- A flurry of new CSS templates should make most websites nicely compatible, without too much fuss. Magazines take note: you don’t need to spend thousands on consultants, just get one good designer and choose a nice template. Unless of course you’d like me to consult for you, in which case, I’m worth every penny.
- By choosing the ePub format, Apple has made their book reader compatible with Google Books (or easily adaptable to be compatible, depending on how they choose to play with the DRM). Smart move, and cuts off Google at the pass. Note: InDesign also has an ePub option – some magazines may want to choose this route to sell straightforward copies of their print edition in the iBookstore.
- Still no Flash compatibility and no multi-tasking. That limits some of the fun that can be had. They’ll come later, though.
- Expect more than a few web-based online stores to appear soon, to avoid having to be locked into developing an app that won’t work on another device. If I were working on that magazine industry Skiff thing, I’d scrap the hardware plan and focus on a cross-platform solution.
- If my laptop gives up the ghost, and Adobe releases a CS4 patch to make it compatible, then I’ll need a good reason not to replace it with one of these.
- It’s not the future of media, but it’s probably one bit of it.
- No, Europe-based friends, I can’t bring you one over.
- They will sell a *lot* in the first few months.
Spin starts licensing their archive content
The lesson for magazines here is never, ever throw anything away. Meanwhile…
Conde Nast suddenly realises that brands have value beyond print
“Guys! I’ve got a brilliant idea!”
New magazine launches for mega-rich athletes
As long as Jamie Redknapp isn’t on the editorial board
Girls Like Us is back!
Brilliantly named, trendy Euro-lesbian mag returns with a smart new look
Paste survives with unusual content-sharing deal
We might start to see a lot more of this kind of thing. (Previously)
Esquire’s moving cover
It’s a simple trick, but it still kinda freaks me out
Creative Review offers subscribers free tomatoes and a planter
Includes prize for the best tomatoes (see comments). Part of their rather fabulous series experimenting with biodegradable packaging
PDF magazine gets David Foster Wallace exclusive
Requires free subscription, but it’s well worth the hassle – and it’s a lovely mag anyway. Also still the only PDF mag I know that’s designed to be printed out on normal printer paper before reading
Limited-edition Emigre prints for sale
Really pretty combinations of previous front pages. Shame they’re so expensive
New Feltron Report prepares to launch
Every year, Nicholas Felton releases his limited edition, infographically gorgeous Annual Report. This year’s is twice the price of last year’s – and is a 16-page, four-colour extravaganza. Almost guaranteed to be worth it
Perhaps my favourite magazine of last year was Strange Light. It was a beautiful, elegiac magazine made up of images from Sydney’s dust cloud storm. Most remarkable, however, is how, and how fast it was put together.
It was created in the USA by Derek Powacek, founder of JPEG magazine, from photos he found on Flickr – he identified the owners, got their permission, and had a lovely little magazine on sale via print-on-demand service MagCloud, less than 48 hours after the storm hit.
More of the service’s potential is on view with Onè Respe, a magazine made of archive photojournalism from Haiti, showing its vibrant population pre-earthquake. A group of photojournalists donated some incredible images to the mag, all proceeds from which go to the American Red Cross International Response Fund for Haiti relief. The magazine contains a couple of articles as well as some fantastic full-bleed double spreads.
Its title is Haitian creole for “Honour and Respect”. You can see a preview and buy the thing here. It costs $16, $12 of which goes straight to the fund. $12 – I assume the price change means that all monies go straight to the fund (well done, HP). UPDATE: yep.
The idea for the magazine was photographer Lane Hartwell’s, and it was designed by Powacek. It looks like it’s been really well put together, and fast. There’s a Q+A with Lane here. Now go and buy it.
It’s a good video, though its opening presages much (perhaps unintentionally?): a series of magazine covers on the screen of a laptop.
(Picture by David of Earth)
The mighty, multi-format Ben Hammersley has been doing some thinking about how magazines should work to make the most of every format that they are in, and the need for metadata to be part of a digital magazine’s workflow.
You can catch up with his thinking starting here, then here and here. Here’s my thoughts on a bit of where he’s going with that.
Read the rest of this entry »
Cartoonist annotates each week’s Guardian Weekender magazine
They should commission him to do it for real one week
Tablets can’t save magazines
The backlash has already begun. And they both make good points. Right now, the industry is focused on making payment possible. But will enough readers want to do so? (via Bob Newman)
Magazine Magazine to launch
Except it already exists
Archive of underground classic International Times available online
Not new, but I finally caught up with it. Contains some fantastic experiments with design on newsprint – future Newspaper Clubbers take note. Speaking of underground magazines…
“That’s what the world needs now – love, sweet love, and a good underground magazine”
Cult hero and graphic novel writer Alan Moore launches his own print magazine, Dodgem Logic. Click around the website, there’s plenty of surprises tucked away in the corners
This website focuses on developments
in the magazine industry around
the world.
It is written by
Andrew Losowsky,
a writer and editor based in the USA. He has so far edited two books about magazines, and
has ideas for
many more.
He writes about magazines for The Wall Street Journal and others, and
is co-curator of
the Colophon international magazine biennale. He also runs
Stack America.
The rest of the time, he creates experiences.
