“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
–Jean giraudoux
Another Digital Concept Magazine
Publisher Bonnier worked with design agency BERG to come up with the Mag+ tablet:
via, Gizmodo
I like this guy already because he says the page flipping is lame (my word) and scrolling is more natural. I also like the idea where you find the things you’re interested in reading in an image based environment and then when you want to drill down in a story the images fade back and it becomes a pure reading experience. This allows the device to be quite small. Of course, photography is so critical to the future of media, I can’t overstate how well it works to communicate ideas quickly and helps you navigate a ton of information.
The only critical piece of the puzzle left here (besides building the damn thing) is the price. This is where the magazine industry will inevitably drop the ball because they’d quickly like to get back to the large profits they were used to. I think cell phone pricing will be critical for mass adoption. The device should be $100 or even free and then users will pay for a tiered number of magazines or articles to look at each month and lock into one and two year plans. On the other hand if they want to charge $800 for the device the yearly subscription for a magazine should be $1. The cost of making a copy and distributing it is zero. I would pay the dollar to have access to a bunch of magazines where I might read a couple articles a year or only look at the pictures. Sort of a newsstand type of arrangement.
The publishing industry is looking a little brighter these days. Just in time.
thx, anthea.
Ryan Lobo: Photographing The Hidden Story
Ernest Hemingway’s Tips For Writing Well
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
via Copyblogger.
Photographers & Social Media Survey Results
A little while back I linked to a survey Jim M. Goldstein was conducting (here) to see how photographers are using Social Media. The results are in (here) and can be seen in this slide presentation:
We all now know the value of social media in strengthening a community or bringing together groups of people with similar interests but the big question hanging out there is always “can it bring me new business.” Certainly, it’s been proven that you can build your reputation as a very connected photographer online and garner assignments because of this and you can also sell products back into the community you’ve created, but what about your average professional photographer looking to add blogging, tweeting or facebook as a component to their overall marketing? This survey doesn’t seem to prove that it works (Jim says the potential is there), but I do think we are trending this way faster than we think, just not the way you might expect. It’s less about your connections buying something from you in the 1000 true fans model and more about them spreading the word about something you’re working on or buying into a product your been assigned to shoot.
Looking at it from a magazines perspective I think that hiring 20 photographers and writers each month who are each connected to 1000 people who might then each be connected to 100 people makes a lot of sense as a consideration in the hiring decision.
The Future of Photography (Popular Photography 1944)
I FEEL THAT the camera finds its main importance as a recording and communicating mechanism, and I should like to see it develop until it takes its place with the pencil and the typewriter as an instrument of our everyday language. Photography should be taught in the schools along with penmanship as part of postwar education’s expansion.
It is possible to perfect the camera to the point where it will become an automatic instrument which will focus, expose and process the film by the mere push of a button. In this way we will be able to realize a medium possessing an immediacy between seeing and recording unachieved by any other art.
via A Photo Student
A Guide To Paper Buying
Of all the things that make up a magazine, paper buying is probably the least understood. It’s also the most expensive line item in the monthly production of magazines. The quality of the paper was always a huge gripe in the Art Department, but I would have gladly taken a cut in quality for an increase in the photography budget.
Dead Tree Edition has a post called “The 10 Most Common Paper-Purchasing Mistakes” and I think it may even be possible to apply some of these cost savings ideas and not take a hit on paper quality. Wouldn’t that be awesome. People working in management positions at magazines owe it to themselves to understand the jobs of the other people in the office who have a stake in the monthly budget pie. And, who knows maybe some day you’ll find yourself creating a magazine on your own and need to buy paper. More insight (here).
Is Content Still King?
“some problems don’t have answers. That is the flaw in the ‘they will find a business model’ logic. As if business models grow on trees. Don’t assume there is always an answer.”
via Daily Intel.
Men’s Health Caught Recycling Coverlines
Mediaite picked up a story that Perez Hilton ran about Men’s Health using the same coverlines from 3 years ago (here) on their December issue and they have a quote from Zinczenko defending the practice.
Most magazines recycle coverlines. Maybe there’s a little rewording or maybe they just lift one off an old cover, but it’s not unusual to refer to a cover book for inspiration when writing lines. I’ve heard that Time Inc. has a book where words, colors and cover subjects have sales numbers attached to them (that’s why you see so many Jesus covers on Time) for further insight into how things will perform on the newsstand.
The problem is not the recycled coverlines, it’s the recycled content. There are only a limited number of ways you can say the same thing over and over again and magazines keep reaching for the same high performing content to keep the ship afloat a little bit longer. For a magazine like Men’s Health they actually create content specifically for the newsstand and in many cases it’s fluff so they can write a line that contains the magic words “sex, abs, best body, ultimate….” Rodale is notorious for fluffy coverlines that have very little payoff inside (not to mention fake numbers). I think we’re all very aware by now that magazines are digging their own grave.
George Lois Rips Today’s Magazines A New One
In a interview with Blackbook (here) George Lois doesn’t pull any punches on the state of magazine design today. I was at the SPD awards ceremony when he received a lifetime achievement award of sorts and remember getting so charged up after listening to him talk and watching a video Fred Woodward shot. Of course once back to reality, in an office filled with editors who wanted to cram information in every nook and cranny of the magazine that energy soon drained out. I can’t wait for magazines to stop trying to become websites and go back to being magazines again. George agrees:
“Magazine design is almost an oxymoron with most magazines today. It goes for even a great magazine like Vanity Fair. If you get even one inch of white space to breath you’re lucky. Everybody’s just packing in the information. Most magazines you pick up — you choke to death.”
“They say, ‘People buy magazines to read, for information.’ Well, you buy a magazine not only for that but so you can have exciting visual experiences. They try to jam words and pictures on every square-inch of the page like they’re working on a Web site.”
“Look at Vogue. Oh my God. Vogue and Harper’s once were very well designed magazines. I mean they were exciting to look at. You could not give a shit about fashion and be excited by the whole look of the magazine. You look at Vogue now: it’s not even designed. What a difference. You pick up a Vogue back in the days of [Condé Nast’s Alexander] Lieberman and those guys, and you look at it now, and it’s a disgrace.”
“Very few magazines do you look through — and I’m not talking as a designer, I’m talking as a normal person — do you look through something and you open a spread and it takes your breath away a little bit…
“I know, you’re pressured by your editor. If not the editor, the publisher: ‘Look at all this wasted space here.’ Blah, blah, blah. ‘Your readers want information.’
“Well, oh shit. Go fuck yourself.
“Meanwhile you go to a newstand, there’s about 200 magazines that all look the same. They got pictures of somebody — some asshole — I’ll never understand how editors and publishers think — showing just a famous person with blurbs all over their face. I’ll never understand why they think that would be something people would want to buy. I don’t get it.
“It’s a joke. A couple of years all the editors and publishers [at ASME] invited me to come down and kick their asses about covers. I go down. Standing ovation. ‘Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!’ Nothing changed. It’s all bullshit.”
They’re always better or worse
“The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.”
“I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.”
“It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn’t seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again.”
— Diane Arbus
Oh, They’ll Pay, Alright
Murdoch admits that “The old business model based mainly on advertising is dead.” Digital ads cannot support newspaper journalism. “This is not going to change, even in a boom,” he warns.
via MinOnline.
Thinking Outside The Box
Via, It’s Nice That.
What’s the biggest stereotype about photography?
That it can illustrate an objective truth, and bear witness to an event. You can’t look at a photograph and know what’s going on. It’s just one person’s point of view.
-Photographer and activist Dona Ann McAdams
via C-MONSTER.net.
Dave Labelle On Storytelling
Spray & Pray
Funny gift for someone who does a little too much sprayin’ (here).
Best Multimedia Story From Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar
John Adkisson, a journalism student at UNC Journalism School Chapel Hill won best multimedia story at the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar.
Introducing Hello Artists
Hello Artists is a newly founded photography/illustration agency created by former Wieden + Kennedy art buyers Rachel Shapiro and Leah Jacobson. By way of introduction I asked them a couple questions.
APE: Give me a little background. Tell me how you got started as art buyers at W+K and how long that lasted then about forming Hello Artists?
Rachel: After a few years of working at Blind Spot Magazine I met an Art DIrector from Wieden + Kennedy. His favorite magazine happened to be Blind Spot and he mentioned that WK was looking for a new art buyer. This connection eventually led to a move to Portland, where I started my career in Art Buying at W+K. After a few years at the W+K Portland office, I moved back to New York to freelance and figure out my next move. I’ve spent the past few years freelancing in the city, as well as some time working for the W+K office in Shanghai.
Leah: I was working on my BFA at Pacific Northwest College of Art In Portland when I started as an assistant in in the Art Buying department at Wieden + Kennedy. That was in 2001. It turned into an Art Buyer position a few years later. I left WK in 2007 to do freelance art buying and production, and also to explore the next chapter of my life.
As co-workers we always got along well. There was definitely the sense that we wanted some of the same things for our careers. We talked about starting a gallery someday, both excited by the idea of using our art backgrounds and visual skills in a more entrepreneurial way, but not entirely convinced that a gallery was exactly the thing for us.
We were each doing a freelancing gig at the W+K Shanghai office when we got our first taste of working very closely with each other on the same projects. Based on that experience we knew we’d work well together, so after Shanghai we began to think about how that would take shape. The idea of Hello Artists came about a year later.
We created Hello Artists because we wanted to use our skills and experience to help guide the careers of artists. Equally important is that it also allows us to do work that enhances our own creative lives. As art buyers we had followed the careers of all of the artists on our roster, and we worked with many of them on projects. So it’s very significant to us that we have an ongoing connection with each of them.
APE: Tell me something that might surprise me about Art Buying?
One thing that was initially surprising about art buying was how much mobility it could offer; it’s a field that allows you to explore the option of living in many different places. One might equate the industry to professional sports, the way people change teams all the time. Having the opportunity to live and work in China was an awesome surprise.
APE: Tell me something that might surprise me about W+K?
You’d be surprised how many W+K employees end up marrying one another.
APE: Do you have any advice for people wanting to start their own agency?
We’re a bit new for too much advice. However, we can say that a rep should genuinely like the artists that they’re working with, because they’ll become a big part of your life.
