In 1912, Newsweek, a prominent magazine which had been in print since 1933 ceased printing production and shifted entirely to the digital format. While Newsweek stands out as one of the magazines who made the dramatic shift to a digital platform exclusively, many of today's magazines are or have shifted (at least partly) their publishing to a digital format.
While many magazines are moving to digital publishing for a variety of economical and distribution reasons, the shift to digital publishing challenges the magazine layout protocols that have been established over the last few decades. For one, electronic spaces restrict authors to written forms of meaning making much less than print. Secondly, many consider that the enhanced role of the image in digital publishing is a key aspect in the contemporary experience of reading (Gat, 2012). It is through these changes and differences that digital publishing prompts a new relationship between textual and visual forms of communication (Course content, Module 4) and perhaps, even created tension between these two modes. And beyond the simple balance of power between the text and image, it's important to recognize that the act of using a touch screen is such a radically different movement, scrolling with one’s finger rather than flipping through paper, that it changes the user’s interaction with the visual content" (Gat, 2012). Generally speaking, it's been found that in today's late age of print, there has been a “readjustment of the ratio between text and image in the various forms of print (…) and the refashioning of prose itself in an attempt both to rival and incorporate the visual image” (Bolter, 2001, p. 48).
We are in the beginning of the digital era, and as such digital magazines are still largely influenced by print culture; although we are beginning to see hypermedia and hyperlinks in today's digital magazines, many largely resemble their print versions as far as size of page, layout (and many even mimic the sound of flipping pages, such as this very magazine!). Therefore we are just starting to explore the immense potential the affordances of the digital medium can provide magazine publications.
The Shift to Digital Publication
Quotes from editors of digital magazines that exemplify how the digital shift affects magazine design
Cernuschi from Mousse: "We try to work with reduction—when the quantity of textual and visual content you can upload is limitless, it gets quite difficult—and we didn’t want to be a Wikipedia kind of experience. We use one font across the range, keep the text simple, and try to focus on the images.” (Gat, 2012)
Founders of Triple Canopy: “When Triple Canopy was founded, the content was bounded in a box and you ‘flipped’ through the pages as you would a print magazine. We hoped that this page metaphor would underline our relationship the kind of serious content more associated with printed media—to (as we’ve often stated) ‘slow down the internet.’ In the end, this format proved to be limiting and, ultimately, anathema to our mission to consider the internet’s specific qualities as a form. We eventually redesigned the magazine and scrapped the page in favor of horizontally scrolling columns. In this new format, the relationships between image and text are more fluid. A given image is seen in the context of text that comes both before and after it and the bounds of the magazine are constrained by the size of the browser window and by the computer's screen size, or are in other words, set by the reader.” What this description exemplifies is the way in which the design of web-based art publications considers itself in face of print. (Gat, 2012)
8 Assignment 4/August 2016