Trend

You are currently browsing the archive for the Trend category.

Send in the cloud

July 19, 2010 in Clever ideas, ipad, technology, Trend | 2 comments

Some interesting news from MagCloud, the HP-run service that offers print on demand for magazines. As of today, they’re offering a few new services:

Firstly, and long overdue: worldwide shipping. (UPDATE: only for single issues though. If you want to buy more than one mag, you have to pay separate shipping each time.) Not sure how cost-effective the rates are, but if it’s affordable, it makes the entire service far more attractive for publishers all over the world. Recommended purchases for those new to the party: Strange Light, Onè Respe, and the Life Woodstock reprint (sadly without the ads of the day). Even custom publishers are using it.

Secondly, perfect binding. For a flat rate of $1, on-demand publishers can now perfect bind any mag (only saddle-stitching has been allowed until now). I’ve not seen a sample yet to know how it holds, but it’s an important step towards making professional-feeling magazines. Publishers can upload their own spines, or let the MagCloud system generate it for them. Minimum page count is 20; it also increases the maximum size of a MagCloud mag to 384 pages, and means that magazines no longer have to have page counts in multiples of four.

Thirdly, and most left-fieldly, an iPad application. An opt-in for all publishers on MagCloud, readers can download the free MagCloud app, and then select the magazines they want to read, which are downloaded for offline reading within the app. They’ve created an interface that allows for portrait and landscape viewing, with a simple zoom function, and downloads are a fraction of the size of the print pdf. And if you want a printed copy, you simply hit the “Buy in Print” button at the top right, and an iFrame opens up to a shopping cart on the MagCloud website.

Though I haven’t played with it yet, the app sounds pretty basic. There are no functions to copy/paste text or to share pages with anyone, and you can’t transfer your downloads to read on any other device. There’s also no option to sell digital editions within the app – right now, all those who opt in have to offer their iPad editions for free, though I’m told that a pay-for option is in the works.

When it first launched, I mentioned that a tie-in with Issuu would make sense for MagCloud. Seems like they’re simply making their own competitor. If HP only made printers, I’d say that this was a curious move. However, as a huge company with so many fingers in so many technological pies, perhaps only a company like HP could offer such a joined-up selection of publishing possibilities.

By the time that the iPad app reaches its second or third iteration, and with a few tweaks to their print service, MagCloud could just be the best thing that ever happened to small magazine publishers, in whatever format they want to publish in. Right now, it’s certainly well on the way.

Ten Things #2b: Total inversion

July 18, 2010 in New launches, Opinion, Review, Trend | 3 comments

The first time I heard about its existence, I was excited to read Invert Look. It’s a creation of The Church of London, the non-religious publisher of Huck, and above all, Little White Lies, a marvellous mono-thematic film magazine that’s deservedly forged quite a niche for itself in the film world, and just celebrated five years of existence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ten things #2a: Press Start

July 12, 2010 in Archives, New launches, technology, Trend | 5 comments

Two talented teams of writers and designers have recently launched preview issues of interesting, independent videogame magazines. It’s about time.

First, a little genre history.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ten things #1: For the record

July 10, 2010 in Clever ideas, Death of print, New launches, Trend | No comments

The “print is vinyl” metaphor is a common one among industry futurologists, the argument being that as digital publications improve, print – as vinyl before it – will be left mainly for the hobbyists and obsessives.

True or not, vinyl magazines have more than a little history. Back in 1972, a vinyl-based magazine called Current Audio (first pressing: 75,000; it sold out) lasted a couple of issues, distributed in major American cities by record label Buddha.

Object-based magazines La Mas Bella and Visionaire have both produced vinyl editions over the past five years: the former invited artists to create a series of different LP sleeves, while the latter’s Sound edition included a tiny speaker in the form of a Mini that drove around the grooves of the record. Formerly tattooed magazine Tare Lugnt‘s latest issue is on vinyl, while vinyl is also an inherent part of the beauty of The Journal of Popular Noise.

And now there’s Underwood, a beautifully simple-looking biannual literary magazine, with the tagline “Stories in Sound”. It comes out twice a year, featuring two writers each time. The editor is Nathan Dunne, also editor of the book-format film magazine Tartovsky, and the first issue features the marvellous Toby Litt and the I-don’t-know-her-work Clare Wigfall. Looks lovely, too. At 20 pounds plus shipping, it’s a little pricy, but for a limited-edition vinyl, what did you expect?

Bonus links:
• I write about music magazines in this month’s Eye magazine.
• The Independent does a roundup of some literary magazines.
• Digital editions of print literary magazines.
• The book on McSweeney’s design is gorgeous.
• This is bloody clever.

Smells again

June 7, 2010 in Archives, technology, Trend | 4 comments

According to today’s The New York Times, the Magazine Publishers of America have never heard of a scratch n sniff cover before Sactown‘s latest offering.

Given that they have a vested interest in the story being big, they probably didn’t look too hard. To be fair, the precedents aren’t that easy to find, but they are there:

- Cult movie mag/zine Fright X (scroll down this link) had a scratch n sniff popcorn cover featuring John Walters

- The latest Mono.Kultur – see previous post – has a scratch n sniff cover, as well as insides.

- And, strangely, yesterday here in Bulgaria, someone introduced me to the scratch n sniff cover their magazine ran last year. The mag, Sign Cafe, is aimed at the international advertising market, and last year they carried a cover about a campaign called Mr Lime – it scratch and sniffed as lemon.

Bonus graphic design link: Scratch n sniff sticker designs from the 80s.

UPDATE: Newmanology points to this other example, from a little-known magazine called “Wired“. During its Viz phase, it seems.

Now wash your hands

June 3, 2010 in technology, Trend | 3 comments

(Image borrowed from Motto)

Mono.kultur is one of my favourite small magazines – it’s interesting, it’s tightly focussed, it changes its format to reflect its subject matter, it doesn’t overstretch its content, and it’s affordable.

Its latest issue, which has already been spoken of in other quarters, is about the smell scientist Sissel Tolaas, and instead of images to illustrate the text, it presents blank pages embedded with replications of some odours that she’s been collecting recently, which are the smells of different men in a state of anxiety.

The result is intriguing and interactive, though also creates a combined odour that this particular correspondent doesn’t enjoy having in his nasal passages. It also lingers on your fingertips, meaning that you might suffer unexpected sensory flashbacks if you don’t wash your hands carefully after reading.

However, it’s not the first time that smell has been used in print, beyond the perfumed scent strips inside fashion magazines. Sixteen years ago, Sam Adams beer placed hoppy scents inside American magazines, while an ad for the TV show Weeds did the same with the smell of marijuana, causing parental problems in teenage bedrooms across the nation. A couple of years ago, Romanian Esquire placed an actual plastic perfume bottle inside the magazine, while in 2003, Visionaire reflected on scent in its own, luxurious manner. Recently photographers have also been using smell as a way of making their promos stand out, and there may be more applications to come: David P Sada has a patent for a novelty scent strip that combines scent with pheromones to influence our behaviour.

Smell, along with heft, touch and organically generated sound, is one of the sensual distinctions between print and digital, whether deliberately manipulated or not. There’s nothing quite like that new ink smell – which by the way is apparently harmless – when you flick through a freshly printed matt publication.

Perhaps the closest to Mono.Kultur‘s smellustrations of different men was People magazine’s “sexiest man alive scratch n’ sniff section”. As unpleasant as that seems, it certainly isn’t the most undesirable-sounding use of the technology.

*Shudders*

Visitors to Sofia Design Week will be able to sniff the latest Mono.Kultur for themselves in my exhibition ‘Objects as Magazines’ at the Sofia Art Gallery, 1 June – 20 June.

Review: 48HR magazine

May 19, 2010 in Clever ideas, Death of print, Opinion, Review, Trend | 8 comments

From the moment that the idea was first mooted, 48 Hour Magazine, aka 48HR, got a lot of people talking (including the lawyers). The premise was simple: “As the name suggests, we’re going to write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days.”

Created by a team that included a Wired contributing editor, a former senior editor of Dwell, and the founders of user-generated JPG magazine, it worked like this: on the first day, they unveiled the theme, and gave people 24 hours to submit their work. On the second day, based inside Mother Jones‘ offices, they edited, designed, proofed, uploaded. On the third day, they rested. HP’s print-on-demand service MagCloud then did the rest.

48 hours. One 60-page magazine. So how did it turn out?

Read the rest of this entry »

« Older entries § Newer entries »