For me, magazines have always been something more than the words contained within them. As a culture starved teenager, the mile walk to the nearest suitable newsagent was so exiting, a thing of ritual. I would stand and devour all of the covers, wide eyed.
What I saw was possibility, other worlds, whether via an impossibly beautiful woman or a dangerous looking rock band. These objects were the antithesis of the town I lived in, they gave me a momentary, imaginary way out.
I began to fetishise the whole process, taking a perverse pleasure in not allowing myself to sneak a look between the pages. The titles themselves were incongruous; Melody Maker, Kerrang, The Face.
I loved, and still love the look and feel of magazines. For those hardy enough to hunt them down there are a wealth of beautiful magazines out there. Small publishers are throwing budgetary caution to the wind and creating innovative magazines filled with beautiful design and insightful writing.
Leafing through the impeccable selection of Magazines at Manchester’s Magma Books it’s clear I’m not alone in my obsession. Graphic Designer Mickey Devine is a member of the same clandestine club. “I just love the touch and the feel of magazines, to feel the different stocks of paper between my fingers” he says, adding “I enjoy everything down to the way the magazine folds.”
Some it would seem are a little less precious about how they consume their magazines and newspapers. In December 2009 global powerhouse publishers Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith announced a joint venture to create industry standards for digital magazines to be read on e-readers, tablets and smartphones.
Perhaps for a generation raised on laptops and IPods this will cause little concern. The young people of today grew up with constantly changing, increasingly sophisticated digital technology; we just worried about how to program the video recorder.
Speaking of this digital generation, The Guardians Blake Morrison says, “They’ve eyes only for the luminous screen, ears only for the music in their headphones.” In the digital age the days of passing round a dog-eared copy of Razzle on a school lunch break are long gone, now they Bluetooth each other porn clips or stream hardcore videos live to their Iphone’s.
“Adults have always been worried about children’s playthings: television, computer games, loud music. Now the new worry is connectivity. A generation of young people is growing up with no concept of life without a screen and a keypad. Wherever they are, they’re plugged in and hooked up,” states Morrison.
These are young people who, as photographer Evan Baden puts it, are constantly “bathed in a silent, soft and heavenly blue glow.” They are not troubled by the fact their music has no physical format. As a result the music becomes more disposable.
For example, you can illegally download the entire Beatles back catalogue in about an hour then delete it if on first listen it’s not to your taste. Imagine as a teenager returning home with a seven-inch you had bought that day from Our-Price, then smashing it to pieces upon discovering that the chorus wasn’t instantly catchy enough.
With MP3 based music, and of magazine content on the web, the product or publication ceases to be a complete package. It is no longer a document. The album becomes obsolete, hit singles are retained, the rest disposed of. The same is true with Web based magazine content. The consumer is constantly fed new information. A reader’s attention is continually disrupted by links taking them away from the source, the boundaries between one site and the next blurred are irrecoverably.
There are very few people who are unaware of the increasing popularity of book style e-readers and the ability to read novels and other non-design based literature via Smartphones. This experience remains a straight up aping of the traditional book format because of course, why would we want anything else from a book other than to be able to read it? This is not the case however, with the magazine readers and tablets. Developers plan to re-invent the magazine wheel with an all singing, all interactive multi-media experience.
Amazon’s relatively successful kindle reader has silenced many of its critics by providing a comfortable and innovative means of reading and obtaining material. While the kindle has the ability to display magazine material such as electronic editions of publications, it allows limited interactivity mainly because magazines are not its core focus and also because largely the technology to make interactivity possible is largely still in development.
While the joint venture to create standards for magazine reader’s is shrouded in secrecy. Many of the parties involved have slowly came forward and revealed their own individual take on what the tablets and readers are going to be like. The first to do so was Time Inc. Time released a video showcasing their concept of the reader via their Sports Illustrated publication. While the video showed a product that certainly seemed interesting, there was an overall uncertainty to the whole thing. The video seemed rushed, the content muddled and confusing. And perhaps most importantly, the concept just didn’t seem to flow. It has all the bravado you would expect from a large American publisher like Time but it’s unconvincingly executed. I believe for the concept of magazine readers and tablets to succeed they must give a immersive, linear, traditional magazine style reading experience while bringing something new to the table that traditional print magazines and digital editions of magazines don’t have.
Hearst, who signed up for the magazine standards joint venture have been first out of the starting blocks in terms of showcasing a physical working product. They unveiled the Skiff reader at the January 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The product is developed within Hearst by the company, Skiff. Skiff president Gilbert Fuchsberg stated at the show, "The Skiff Reader's big screen will showcase print media in compelling new ways. This is consistent with Skiff's focus on delivering enhanced reading experiences that engage consumers, publishers and advertisers.” The unit itself is desirable enough to have gadget fans salivating yet one thing we are yet to find out about the Skiff, and indeed its developmental counterparts, is its price, how much the content will cost and how much content will be available. The company hope to commercially release the product mid-2010.
One of most convincing concepts being developed is the Mag+, designed by London based company BERG and developed by Swedish product developers Bonnier R&D. Again, the product is still in the development stage but their presentation at least seems in the keeping with the fundamental pleasures of reading magazines. The developers behind Mag+ realise they are going to face scepticism towards their product and the concept in general. They acknowledge this stating, “Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, luscious photography that draws the eye. They’re easy and enjoyable to read.” They hope to, “marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-reader.” Plus they appear to have put a lot of thought into making the product user friendly and cohesive while being aesthetically pleasing. It is presented as a much more slick and subtle effort than its all-guns-blazing Sports Illustrated counterpart. The Mag+ flows like a conventional magazine with pages scrolling horizontally with the added touch of making the text easier to read by having it scroll down the page. This is much more innovative than many of the current methods used by digital editions of magazines. As stated earlier, if the concept is to be a success, developers and publishers must create a product which takes magazines to the next level, rather than presenting a poor imitation or faddy embellishment of existing print media. If the Mag+ can deliver on its promises then it may be the first real contender to the print throne.
While there have been means of reading magazines paper free for a number of years, none have really taken off. In the U.S, Playboy issues editions of their magazines in pdf form but it makes for a pretty uninspiring reading experience. You may find yourself squinting at a flickering computer screen, having to zoom in and scroll to read the articles then zoom out and scroll to look at a nubile models breasts. Plus, let’s be honest, probably the only reason Playboy is available in this format is to save the blushes of a 16-year-old trying to buy his first porn mag in a local newsagents.
In July 2009, newsagent John Menzies closed their Magazines On Demand service due to lack of demand. The service allowed consumers to buy digital editions of over 140 titles downloaded directly to their computer or smartphone. A statement on the services website stated, “Digital magazines have not proved as popular as we had hoped for and in this difficult economic climate it was not possible for us to continue trading.”
I feel that the service itself was fundamentally flawed. To me, the Magazines On Demand service was ill founded on the premise that the company saw there was a viable digital future in publishing but they didn’t develop their idea enough to make it succeed, as if they were clutching at digital straws hoping that everything worked out. We live in an age of tech-savvy, cynical consumers, consumers who want a fully realised vision, product and service.
One of the potentially key problems of readers and tablets is that once the race is over to get the hardware out there, there will be a number of different models out there, all potentially using different file formats. And there is no guarantee that there will be longevity in the devices or formats. For proof, ask anyone who bought a HD DVD Player rather than its rival, the now widespread Bluray.
The HD DVD Format became commercially available in March 2008 with players costing upwards of £400. By the following February, player and format manufacturers Toshiba announced that production of players and movie discs would be abandoned.
It must sting to know you have paid £400 to watch a limited selection of movies a handful of times in less than a year and there would be no more coming, ever. This is a key concern when it comes to the emergence of magazine readers and tablets especially when you consider that rumour has it the readers could cost over $2000 when launched in the U.S.
Another concern is the financial cost of developing the ‘future of magazines’. The publishing industry of recent years has experienced lean times. 2009 saw a number of magazines close their doors (Arena, Maxim, Portfolio) and very few (Conde Naste’s Love being an exception) open theirs. This technology costs hundreds, millions even to develop just a concept. Couldn’t even a fraction of this be spent on fixing the leaky vessel that is the Magazine industry by putting some time and money into delivering quality content and finding out what consumers really want rather than jumping on a bandwagon.
As a Journalist, I want my work to be read. The format doesn’t matter to me so much in that regard. I don’t have a huge problem with this technology becoming prevalent. My biggest fear is that the content will suffer, that flashy graphics and gimmicky features to show off the capabilities of the devices will dominate.
Graphic designer Mickey Devine is concerned also, “It’s a bit like when web-based content boomed, the design suffered because only web designers could contribute to the design directly. For me, a lot of the artfulness of design was lost.” Mickey also told me he is worried at potential job losses for designers who are not willing to retrain in order to get to grips with the emerging technology at a risk that the technology may be obsolete in a few years.
On the plus side, Magazines delivered digitally would be great space savers, much like swapping your records for MP3 files and crossing your fingers in the hope your laptop doesn’t get a virus and you lose a lifetime of music.
These developments may prove to be innovative, thrilling, and revolutionary even, but for those who love magazines for their tangibility, their collectability, and their gorgeousness this will mean very little.
They will simply look around their houses piled high with books, magazines and records and just sigh thinking, if you don’t understand, then you probably never will.
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