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Magazine report for Ei8ht magazine, #5

Here’s my latest column for Ei8ht magazine, published in November.

I’ve written here before about the two-way relationship between printed magazines and the internet, a relationship that has at last moved on from outright hostility to become a discussion about the appropriate balance between the respective media. Consider the debate being co-organised next month by publishing industry organisations BSME and EDO. The debate asks whether ‘magazines need the web more than the web needs magazines’ and features a number of industry luminaries, of whom few if any will be arguing the internet is irrelevant to their publications.

If the debate highlights the high level of interest in the internet, I expect it also to bring to the fore some of the problems inherent in grappling with the new technology. Like all major changes in focus, the internet brings with it a whole compendium of jargon. The talk is of re-purposing content, brand migration and multi-channel communication. Like all jargon, these phrases are spoken with meaning yet can be interpreted in drastically different ways. But behind the jargon are some sound concepts that are far less complex than many experts would have you believe. The link between the community of readers and an online community is simpler to bridge than some would have you believe, and like so many brand-orientated projects needs a strong sense of what your publication stands for and an understanding of the context within which it fits. This is how The Guardian, at one extreme, and Eight, at the other, have succeeded in combining print and online presences. They both have strong identities with clear tones of voice. Yet many publishers fiddle with the ubiquitous PDF page-turner, the equivalent of printing out a series of web pages and telling the reader that’s a magazine.

While publishers attempt to come to terms with the new media, what are they to do with the old medium of print? One interactive evangelist I talked to recently was adamant that the rise of the internet, combined with the current credit crunch, would leave most newspapers and many magazines extinct within two years. This may be an extreme view, but certainly represents the direction we are travelling.

Yet everything we know, enjoy and love about publications is tied to their physicality, and both The Guardian and Eight rely on a print edition to lend weight to their online presence.

So, what to do with your print magazine? The simple answer is to take as much advantage of what is unique about the print medium. Make your magazine as magazine-y as possible.

Independent magazines have always taken advantage of their relatively small print runs to use otherwise uneconomic papers and effects. Swiss title SoDa regularly combines different papers and rare binding effects; Amelia’s Magazine has made clever use of fur-effect paper and complicated laser cutting to create cover finishes that provide uniquely tactile experiences; titles like 032c and Fantastic Man, both featured in this column before for other reasons, add extra magazine-y-ness through a special binding technique and use of a special matt paper stock respectively.

If the above all rely on traditional page size formats, others play with that basic element. Middle Eastern arts magazine Bidoun recently produced an issue consisting of fold out posters, while Cream, from Hong Kong, changes size and shape every issue – one time it’s a book format, next it’s a folder of torn imagery. Against a context of reductionism in newspaper publishing, British quarterly The Drawbridge deliberately launched at full broadsheet size.

In the US, where small publishers can take advantage of tax breaks to fund their projects, McSweeneys and Esopus have taken creativity to another level. Literary title McSweeneys has published in beautifully finished hardback book form for an issue, while another time appearing as a pile of direct-mail style flyers bound by rubber band. Art magazine Esopus isn’t just about art, much of each issue actually is art. The magazine regularly includes art prints and crafted origami foldouts tipped into its pages – one-off pieces specially created by contributors.

These magazines let their editors and designers experiment and play with the idea of what a magazine can be, pushing the boundaries in ways unthinkable to the average Grazia reader. Yet the success of that magazine – one of the UKs most successful mainstream launches of recent times – is partly due to the choice of paper and printing technique. It uses a matt paper stock that takes great advantage of the way gravure printing deals with flat areas of heavy black ink. As a result, Grazia has a special tactile feel, something unlike any of its competitors had at the time of its launch. This quality is a part of its success, whether or not its readers are conscious of it.

Grazia is not the only magazine from a major publisher to seek to take advantage of the tactile nature of print in this way. Technology title Wired has long sought to bridge the gap between printed and online presentation by using multiple fluorescent and metallic inks across every page. Other titles produce special one-off ‘event’ effects, such as Harpers Bazaar’s re-launch as Bazaar featuring a logo covered in real Swarovski crystals. Less ostentatious are the increasing numbers of foil-blocked logos – see the Economist’s Intelligent Life quarterly lifestyle spin-off.

Intelligent Life is one of a spate of launches in the UK aiming at a high-end affluent reader that have sought to be as magazine-y as possible. The prime example is Monocle, which uses mixed paper stocks to great effect, and also includes a bound-in Manga comic each issue that helps position the title apart from the crowd. When it adds special supplements, Monocle eschews the usual glue or belly-band to contain them in favour of combining magazine and supplement by rubber band. Wallpaper also deserves a mention here for its use of gatefold pull-outs, special inks and special subscription editions that appear without cover lines. Earlier generations of magazines regularly used many of these techniques, and if the development of web publishing channels allows more magazines to take advantage of these same techniques, who can complain?

In their desire to make the most of their physical attributes these titles demonstrate a shared love of the magazine form which harks back to a time when magazines were produced on a less industrial scale that encouraged experimentation. They are making themselves more magazine-y.