• Temporize
• Web log
  2009
• 05/01/09

This is one of those questions/comparisons that is always guaranteed to start a debate, and seems to popping up more often than not lately, starting with about a month ago when I picked up a 1971 version of Bruno Munari’s book Design As Art at a car boot sale. I’m currently reading though it, and was going to wait until I’d finished before posting about it, but the other day I was surprised to find via the CR blog that Yes Studio has just redesigned the Penguin on Design series, which includes Design As Art. I think they have done a great job of giving the publication a new face and still keeping it so in line with the content and the 1971 cover design.

Secondly, we have Is Graphic Design Art, a web poll I came across via Michael’s twitter feed, which surprisingly, shows ‘Yes’ as the general consensus. Personally, I’m in the ‘No’ camp. Sure Graphic Design and Art share many things in common, and I would definitely agree that Graphic Design is artistic, but the fundamental difference between the two is that the primary purpose of Graphic Design is to convey and deliver information, and not self expression, as I would say is the primary purpose of Art.

But hey, that’s just me …

Following on in the ever exiting (and disappointing) ePaper advancements,  Plastic Logic have just announced the next step in electronic readers. Their as yet unnamed decive uses the same technology as Amazon’s Kiddle, but thankfully comes looking a little more like a newspaper and less like a brick. With a screen that is twice the size the Kiddle’s, Logic’s device claims to be able to provide a newspaper like layout which can be continually updated via a wireless link, storing and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.

TG Daily has some good pics.

Waaaaaaay back in the early 21st century, when I had just finished studying and had landed myself a job with London based Hoop Associates, surfstation.lu was THE design portal. Sure DiK was pretty cool, and INfront was my home grown portal, but with its ‘Pick One’ user submitied photo gallery, free grunge fonts and ever updating design news, to me surfstation was the bee’s knees.

Unfortunately, as the web progressed and sites became more advanced, surfstation stayed as it was. The news became less frequent, the fonts out of date and then flickr came along … and I did what any other designer hungry for news would do. I moved on.

But – as they say – better late than never. After 6 years I’m happy to see that rather than being pulled down, Surfstation is back with a clean new look. And while there aren’t as many sections as there used to be, the guys are looking to expand the site ‘as time goes by’.

Just don’t make it aother 6 years …

I was just reading through a article over at Web Monkey about what they consider does and doesn’t work on the mobile web, which has listed magazines and newspapers in the ‘doesn’t’ category due to screen restrictions and battery limitation.

The interesting thing I find here is that the services that are listed in the ‘doesn’t’ category as see as things “the mobile web isn’t, and perhaps never will be, very good at”, which I find  unimaginative and  short sited. While the battery limitations is one that faces any mobile device, what about the screen size? Yes, I know its no DPS, and I’m sure reading the small text on the go may give you a headache, but no more than reading a novel on the tram might. And while magazines as we know them might not suit current portable devices, as we have seen in recent years, magazines have a knack for re-inventing themselves in order to take advantage of whatever distribution methods are currently available. ( this is a magazine, PDF-mags )

Back to printing world, and Andrew Losowsky over at Magtastic has done a great write up on MagCloud, a POD (print on demand) website for magazines. While POD has been with us for a while, and is currently utilised for magazines such as the Boicozine zine, this is the first POD service that caters specifically for printing magazines. Though, as Andrew points out at $4.00 for 20 pages, or around $9 for 44 pages, it’s currently a little expensive for the average self publisher.

A little while ago (about a year) I published a little article on my take of the future of digital publishing. Since then there has been a number of advancements in digital paper and eReaders. While not a huge step forward, The Kindle from Amazon is one such product that shows us the direction the publishing world is headed. I wouldn’t go as far to say its the iPod of eReaders, but for a company such as Amazon to invest in such a product definitely shows that this is an area in the future of publishing that warrants serious attention.

But, if you’re like me, then a big white brick with a mono display (and a stupid name) is not really what you what to be reading your novels on, let alone a magazine. Where are the eBooks that are exactly that, A book? with actual pages? Thankfully researchers at Maryland and Berkeley Universities in the US have been working on such a device and developed a prototype eBook with two displays that simulate the turning of pages. While still a bit on the chunky side, this humanising of  technology is what is needed to successfully move the publishing world forward in the digital arena.

After years of speculation, digital paper is finally stating to make an appearance. Like movies and music before it, mainstream publishing is moving toward the digital realm, and with many of the top electronic brands such as Sony, Fujitsu and Philips pouring resources into the development of digital paper, electronic books and readers using this new technology are sure to be as much apart of out lives in the future as the iPod is now.

With the help of the Internet, the last 10 years has seen a massive increase in the publishing of digital publications and zines. There are now sites such as pdf-mags.com that cater specifically for independently published digital publications, and more recently, the iTunes store has seen the inclusion of PDF magazines as part of their podcast subscription service. Magazines such as The Fader have already started making the transition and are now letting readers download a digital copy of the magazine for free.

As we have already seen, copyright and illegal distribution of digital files over the internet has become quite a thorn in the side of the music and film industries, with the RIAA and MPAA going as far as to sue individuals for downloading copyright material. Recently television networks in Australia have started blowing the “piracy” trumpet, claiming that the illegal distribution of television shows over the internet are hurting the ratings and are responsible for a loss in advertising revenue. So what then for the publishing industry? Will the AAP and MPA be the next to cry thief and start taking the public to court? Or will a smarter approach be taken, one that doesn’t involve making criminals out of ones customers.

Sooner rather than later we will see the emergence of an iTunes like application for storing, arranging and viewing digital and PDF magazines, which will only help to propel the digital publishing arena forward, and will most certainly do for publishing what pod casting had done for radio. This is where the magazine and book publishers need to be looking. It won’t be long before storage and reading devices using digital paper arrive to integrate with these applications, at which point the digital publishing revolution will truly begin.

1000 magazines in your pocket anyone?