Thursday, March 18, 2010

A Window Into The Future Of Pages...


Apple's iPad has only been on sale for a few days, but many have been wondering what it can do to rescue the print industry from the current digital dilemma it's now in...

Particularly the world of magazines. With subscriptions down and the trend expected to continue, many have seen the future in devices like the Kindle and now, the iPad. Steve Jobs believes this is the future of media and many believe him, but no one knows exactly what this new structure will look like. What would a future digital magazine or book look like?

Well, here's an example one magazine mocked up as to what/how to deliver a magazine to a 21st century audience. The results are quite interesting in the possibilities that can result from an embedded content and show how a subscription based media could work.

Take a look...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would never by a subscription for a digital motion magazine or comic. I don't care what all the tree huggers say. You can't beat slick printed media. I mean, can you imagine reading your Playboys in the bathroom on an ipad? Heh heh...

Anonymous said...

If you want to see what a real magazine will look like on the iPad and other Tablet devices check out what WIRED and Adobe have created. This is about as real as you can get and will be live starting in June.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-wired-ipad-app-a-video-demonstration/

jeffk said...

Like one of the Vimeo commenters said, this reminds me of those unskippable DVD menu transitions - it's mostly a big, flashy waste of my time as a reader. I'm sure this kind of presentation has its uses, but in terms of straight-up content delivery, it's just way too busy and sluggish.

I'd guess that an iPad version of a magazine would look a lot like a print version, just with the benefits of an interactive medium. It'll have an easily accessible TOC, embedded media, and clean, readable, adjustable text. Of course, we'll also have to deal with things like animated advertisements and auto-play commercials.

Anonymous said...

Words on any type of paper have been around for thousands of years. There is no way written magazines are going to disappear. There is simply no way digital media will replace written media entirely.

Farenheit 451 said...

What happens if there is some kind of apocalypse and all digital technology is rendered inoperable and we lose a great deal of information that had never been printed to texts? It would be like losing all of the scrolls in the great library of Alexandria on a global scale. I'll stick to buying printed texts, thank you.

Unknown said...

If there is a global catastrophe, I suspect I will have greater concerns than how to access my digital copies of Entertainment Weekly. :)

I subscribe to about 6-8 different magazines. Most of them I read and then toss them in the recycling pile. IMO, it would definitely be an improvement to have that old content archived on an iPad-type reader where they can be accessed or searched for years to come.

The mags I do keep are mostly just taking up space on my shelf. I keep them for reference purposes--not because I enjoy the hard copy media or have any sentimental attachment. So again, digital would be a huge improvement.

I'm not crazy about the demo linked in this article. I'm another DVD menu hater and that looks a little high concept for my tastes. But I'm definitely looking forward to more publishers embracing digital distribution and want to see what they come up with in terms of the presentation.