ESSAY TWO RESEARCH

‘Editorial Design: Digital and Print’ by Cath Caldwell and Yolanda Zappaterra

-          “Editorial design is no longer bound by the rectangles of printed pages but is increasingly available on mobile media… good communication and a passion for storytelling remain essential skills.”

Positive impact

-          By readers engaging with the news services on their phones, GPS tracking can be used by news organisations to “link in to advertisers, based either on the reader’s interests or his or her location,” which allows them to maintain revenue from advertising that would have originally come from print advertising.

Negative impact

-          Editorial news designers now must have a basic understanding of coding to work with digital platform developers

-          Editors no longer have the full attention of the reader, as mobile phones have altered the way people read and take in information: (2012 statistics) 84% of time spent on mobile phones is at home, which is usually done at the same time as watching tv or looking at other media.

DIGITAL MAGAZINE PUBLISHING:

Positive Impact

-          ‘Real Simple’ in the US: website introduces readers to the print and brings in subscribers while the magazine content feeds into the website.

-          Rise of independently published zines: by using technologies that to “print to order”, small companies can easily set up publications.

-          Costs are lower and waste is reduced

-          Instead of paying for advertising, these small publishers can use social media to promote their work

-          These publications can also have a cleaner, more refined aesthetic as they do not have to implement as many cover lines into the design. This makes them stand out next to other newspapers.

COMMON DIGITAL MYTHS DEBUNKED

1.       Arrival of tablet marks death of print

FALSE – they offer more interactive possibilities

2.       Readers don’t read long text on digital devices

FALSE – It’s a myth that mobile devices are just used for an instant hit on the go. As on-screen legibility has improved, readers have started to engage in long-form text on these devices: 2012 statistics show average length of online session increased from “a quick update” to 17 to 31 minutes.

3.       Small-run print publications will survive

TRUE – Readers are intrigued by print publishers that continue to experiment and play around with formats and as long as publishers can afford paper to print on there “will always be print publications”.

4.       Large Print publications will not survive

FALSE – Big publishing giants do not care as much about maintaining print for publishing as the costs of the “traditional model of print and distribution”. Many have ceased to print and moved to website versions.

POSITIVE IMPACT FROM DIGITAL

-          “for the first time in history, publications can be interactive”

-          Editorial design for both screen and print are constantly innovative and exciting. These new ways of thinking and producing designs that apply to both paper and digital are “taken up in many other areas of visual communication”

-          editorial designers have more opportunities: publications are able to gain larger followers now that most people have mobiles phones on them all the time, and ‘apps’ enable moving images to be added and interactivity to the digital prints.

-          Digital Printing has become much cheaper and as a result, short-run publications are easier to print. EG, Newspaper Club: website where you upload editorial material and it is posted online or printed.

Digital world of editorial and publishing forces the printing world to innovate and produce creative results:

Guardian Newspaper case study:

As a result of the digital age where print is competing with tv and the internet, the creative director at the time of 2005, Mark Porter, made the decision to make the newspaper front-to-back colour. Porter commented “Nowadays, when you do a newspaper redesign you are also designing a website, pages for mobile devices and for apps”.

“Tablets have opened up lots of other opportunities”. Using the same principles from print, design for the screen and interactive devices have enhanced these principles: “In the future we will have more opportunities to do good editorial design in digital media”.

Jeremy Leslie –

Negative impact of the digital world

-          The digital world allowed publishers to measure the success of online publications and soon after this they expected to be able to do it with print publications, which destroyed the creative focus of the publications, and “there was a shift from a creative business to a business business”.

-          “Every app appears the same”: with paper there is touch, smell and size, whereas on the Ipad for example it is difficult to make things stand out and catch people’s attention.

-          “Tablet magazines have largely failed”: promoting their app is a difficult task, whereas for a physical publication people notice them on the newsstands.

-          People buy fewer magazines and less regularly than they did a few decades ago

-          Digital versions of publications are much more read than their physical counterparts, which could lead to the end of its print: Creative Review “add a line to every blog reminding readers they publish a print edition”.

Positive impact of the digital world

-          Social network presence means magazines can expand their reach and a grow their audience: “most people who want to engage with magazines aren’t there for the products but to participate in that club”, one that hosts events and provides special offers.

-          The challenges that designers and editors face with digital publications force them to question the basic principles of design.

DEVELOPMENT OF COVERS FROM 1940 TO PRESENT DAY

1940-90

- typeset by hand in metal type restricted fonts and advertisers’ possibilities

- colour covers began to appear to attract reader attention and advertisers gained more interest

- The Sunday Times started to use double-page spreads in the 60s, which set the tone for the rest of the UK

- The magazine cover became an important “visual window”

- Colour printing increasingly became more widely available

- Publications began to experiment with sizes and formats and typographic and grid explorations advanced

1990-2000

- Digital printing saved time and were therefore more cost-effective as they used simpler technologies such as inkjet

- Integrity of the newspapers was challenged after the WikiLeaks and UK phone hacking scandals

- Respect for large press publishers declined and jobs were lost as newspapers shifted to digital, eg. Boston Globe

- Print-trained designers were forced to retrain for interactive digital

2010-present day

- Designers and publishers could use interactivity and moving image with the arrival of the iPad

- absence of editors proved positive for some and negative for others

- App Flipboard: allows publishers to bring together content from blogs, websites and social feeds into a well-designed digital magazine

Jon Hill –

Positive impact of digital world

-          Website fonts are portrayed differently on different browsers and platforms, and so with the development of technologies and with the iPad editors and designers are more in control of colour and the brand than they were before

-          “It is no longer a case of moving around text and images on a page layout. Designing for digital newspapers demands a whole new approach”.

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/feb/20/what-effect-internet-on-journalism

Aleks Krotoski, Sun 20^th Feb 2011

(visited 06/02/2019)

-          Technology helps people identify stories that are newsworthy quickly to publish, Social networks such as twitter and Facebook provide snap-shots of events happening from a first-hand witness perspective, while blogs and citizen news offers analysis of these events faster than print or tv can. 

https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/07/fall-rise-magazines-print-digital

Barbara Rowlands, Thurs 7^th March 2013

(visited 06/02/2019)

-          Audit Bureau of Circulations showed magazine sales are plummeting, eg. “Weekly women’s consumer titles and Nuts’s miserable year-on-year sales figures” down by -29.7%

-          Most successful titles have returned to their roots: the term magazine comes from the 16^th century Arabic term “makzan” meaning storehouse. Publishers fixate too much on how to distribute their work (either print or digital) while big titles like Top Gear use various platforms to provide endless content to its fans: it’s a brand that offers a print product and an app which involve HD videos, endless photos and offers. This motoring app is now number one in the UK and US.

-          Magazines that take inspiration from online platforms are also more successful: Conde Nast’s Easy Living uses a format inspired by Pinterest’s template, with block sections of various areas (cookery, fashion etc.) and its circulation is up 7.5% each year

‘The Modern Magazine, Visual /journalism in the digital era, by Jeremy Leslie’, Published 2013, Laurence King Publishing.

Positive Impact

Expansion of the design, editorial and publications world

-          The arrival of the internet has concerned many about the survival of the magazine, but for a decade people have been saying the magazine will die out as a result for it

-          “the relationship between magazines and websites is far more complex than that” (pg. 214)

-          Realistically, magazines have benefitted creatively in the short term from the appearance of the internet and other digital forms

-          Independent magazine makers have turned to blogs as a way of making more of a mark in the editorial world

-          Alongside this, bloggers create printed publications alongside their online content, eg. Its Nice That

-          “Blog and magazine live side by side, supporting each other through their distinct roles” (p. 214)

-          The digital world is relied on by designers and editors to design and write their magazines, and “research, promote and sell them” (p. 215)

-          The free services like Gmail, Facetime and Skype enable communication between the readers and contributors and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter promote them

-          Independent magazines can reach more people as a result of the internet revolutionising distribution

Economical

-          Online payment solutions such as Paypal also enable fast, international online sales for the publishers and it means that “smaller, specialist magazines can now seek international markets without incurring the cost of third-party distribution services, or increasing their print run to supply stores across the world” (p. 215)

-          Internet is challenging designers and editors on how use print to its full potential

-          Scott Dadich, Conde Nast vice president of design and platforms: With cheaper costs in delivering files digitally (such as through an iPad app) than physically printing, the money saved from publishing it digitally than printing means more investment can be put back into the print product, towards for example paper stock quality. Although this means print changes, the magazine becomes more valued and therefore will not disappear.

Positive Visual Impact

-          Eg. Alternative paper stocks are now being explored and the default gloss finish seen on most magazines on the news-stands is being abandoned for a matt stock market

-          This was suddenly possible for food magazines, as digital print profiling meant pre-press could prepare images that work well with the additional absorption of uncoated paper, which ensures the food still looks appetising

-          As a result of digital magazines, print magazines use new techniques to stand out to readers, such as metallic blocking, special inks and die cuts.

Problems with interchanging design between the print and digital world/IPAD

-          Backlit screen of an iPad makes photographs look stunning, but it lacks the subtlety of print that ensures the visual hierarchy on the page as a result of this “shiny, backlit presence” (p. 217).

-          While some may argue the iPad will take over the future of publishing, realistically they are just one form for designers and editors to play around with and experiment through: “one part of a growing trend towards multiple channels”. Eg. The New Yorker has an iPad and iPhone app, while Monocle launched a digital radio station, a chain of shops selling branded products and are planning on moving into cafes.

-          “hugely challenging time” but also a “new golden age of magazine making”.