News from the Issuu Blog (08/13/2011)

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Issuu Blog News Issuu Voices: How Electronic Beats is making magazines collectable again. Aug 12, 2011 09:52 am | Issuu Issuu Voices is back a recurring segment on our blog. Each segment is written by and for publishers to highlight top quality publications as well as industry best practices across the world. If you wish to participate, please let us know. We invited Max Dax, editor of Electronic Beats Magazine, to pick up on a conversation from their latest issue. In an editorial opener, he popped the question:  How can print geneate a new trust in quality and reliability? In other words: How do you make magazines collectable again? We were sure curious to hear his answer. How to Make Magazines Collectable Again When it comes to publishing in these times of change, one of the central questions becomes: What kind of journalistic freedom does the paperless, digital, socially-networked online revolution offer? I mean: Who needs yesterday's news on paper, when you can get the up-to-date information on your iPad or smartphone in a second? I don't know how many million trees could be saved if we'd transfer the entirety of news onto smal sets of screens. Sure, you get a problem of information on-demand, once your device begins to pre-select your fields of interest, ie: it basically offers only what you want to read. But still, the idea of a paperless newsstand seems to be quite overwhelming popular. With ambitious magazines, though, things are different. Here, I see a clear tendency towards unique, beautifully crafted, collectable – even high-priced – magazines. We are talking about magazines printed on sustainable, high quality paper, designed by great art directors, with texts and photos that are produced consciously with the perspective in mind that the printed matter will last. Magazines of this kind will resemble books more than the magazines we used to know – and like a book they will be judged by the amount of new ideas they offer and the inspiration they will transfer to the reader. Thanks to the fact that you can discuss everything on a day-to-day basis online, printed magazines can really become specific and even erratic, as the need to cover the latest news no longer exists. For the magazine editor, this offers golden opportunities when it comes to content. When you don't have to satisfy an on-demand culture, you can get visionary. Or, more aptly: You can adapt visionary ideas that have stood the test of time and confront them with interviews and texts that reflect the radical changes of the digital revolution in art, fashion, literature, film and music. Of course, the more specific and surprising you get, the more difficult it is to define your target audience, if there is any. But then again, in terms of distribution, Issuu is a perfect tool to present a worldwide readership something that, in the past, would have never had any chance at the newsstand. So, we now have the paradox situation that the magazine culture somehow profits from the fact that the magazine as we knew it is a thing of the past. And that’s okay. We’re not speaking out against reading a magazine like Electronic Beats via Issuu.com on a tablet device. Our contributor Hans Ulrich Obrist coined the term “reality production” for what can happen when two interesting people start talking to each other. In some ways you, as an online reader, become a witness of such reality production, when you read the facsimile of a magazine in an online version. At least if it’s one that defines itself as a test laboratory for the print world. comments | read more      About This is the latest post from Issuu's blog. We write about new features, tips and everything else related to Issuu. Enjoy! You have manually subscribed to receive Issuu's blog posts as email. And now you're looking at it. Copyright (C) 2009 Issuu All rights reserved. 1370 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Forward this email to a friend. Unsubscribe maisongerai.suratku@blogger.com from this list.