Online, another blogger mentioned an article in The New Yorker about Superbugs that was in the newest issue. With so many resistant strains of bacteria -- like MRSA, which in 2006 claimed 105,000 infections and 19,000 deaths the article reports, I wanted to read the article by Jerome Groupman so I did, online, and then filed the article with a tag on delicio.us.
It takes a week, it seems, to get the current issue of the magazine delivered to me in New Mexico, and then after a while, the magazines get put out for recycling. By the time the magazine came and I flipped through it, I realized I'd read most of what was interesting already, online.
An article with a superb illustration by Riccardo Vecchio on Jimmy Carter, Who's Afraid of Jimmy Carter, appeared in the July 20 issue of New York Magazine. I documented the article with a photo of the article and page layout because I was then on the road and I wanted to go back to it online so that I could tag it and file it online so I could note the artist. I wanted to capture the effectiveness of the page spread layout and also get the author's name so I could look it up online. The artist and his illustration was of more interest to me than the article and, in full page, it really pops -- something that can't happen online. It was my photo, then, that led me back to the article. When I pulled it up online to get the illustrator, the little illustration was about as big as the eye of Jimmy, above. You just can't get the feel for the art that way, online. The illustration and the article didn't mesh with cultural force like it did with the printed version that linked words and art. Layouts are limited online.
Likewise, I picked up Time Magazine recently, just because the cover caught my eye. This election cycle is intense with voters split half and half and the illustration with both Obama and McCain split in half communicates that. You don't realize it, but by putting Obama on the left, you hit him first, visually, as you read left to right. But the most powerful placement is to the right as we linger longer there, so McCain has an edge with positioning. By only showing half a face, our mind, subconsciously, works to fill in his other half. As I flipped through the magazine, I was astonished at the changes in layout and design that have taken place for the inside page layouts and sections. Not being in NYC or in cities with a lot of strong newstands placed here and there, I'd not picked up Time in quite awhile. The magazine has changed more since I'd last picked up the hard copy than it had in all my years of reading it. So the word content didn't matter to me as I held graphics in my hand and my thoughts became consumed with the power of print. Time. It is changing how we are getting our graphic messages, with the decline of print media circulation.
My point, though, is that while I find reading magazines in someways now easiest online, the illustration and art of magazines is in a top class of its own and for the cultural and social impact, the graphic appeal and powerful statement of printed art is just not the same online.
Magazines mirror back to us our moments, our values, ourselves as a people of our nation. Look at Carter's eye, up top. It grabs you strongly in print in a way it just doesn't online and the way the headline is positioned with the story on the left and Carter's gaze coming across that page from right to left is completely lost in translation in the online article.
Betwixt and between. I fear we'll lose an important cultural reflection if we lose print magazines.
I think you have this so right!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Kay Dennison | August 18, 2008 at 06:25 PM