In 1995, Designer David Carson published a book titled “The End of Print.” Print wasn’t really over, David had just significantly stirred the pot, at least graphically. Print itself had a few years left. But the internet had arrived.

It’s 2010, and print publishers would like you to believe that print isn’t dying, but it is. A recent report from mediaIDEAS says ” “Over the next 10 years, the magazine industry will experience deep-rooted change from primarily a print-oriented business to one where digital products will represent the largest share of a smaller periodical industry. We expect digital to be the primary source of revenue for magazines past the 2016-2017 time frame.”

Digital is expected to increase from making up 1/3 of the periodical industry in 2009, to roughly 75% in the coming years. Death doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can represent a positive evolution. This is post isn’t about re-hashing a tired subject — it’s about the other side of the coin. The Digital side.

I started as a magazine guy. I don’t think print is at it’s at it’s point of extinction, but let’s face it, we’re in a time of drastic change, and save for a few in-denial print editors, it’s no secret.. What used to be a high frequency news medium will need to evolve into low frequency (semi-annual or annual) feature based publications (more akin to a coffee table books) if print is to survive. Some have already gone this route. Others have gone out of business. Others are grasping at straws.

Print-on-demand might be a great way to go about this. Solutions for this already exist — MagCloud is one example. With this model, ad buyers could quantify impressions much like they do online. Print circulations have long been fudged/inflated (they are online as well). I’ve personally seen them inflated more than 200% and sold as such, but print-on-demand could lead to actual readership data that would be more valuable to marketers than inflated, confusing guestimates. And more importantly waste would be drastically reduced.

We ceased publishing the last magazine I was involved with in 2007, upon the realization that the time had come that we weren’t doing anything we couldn’t do more effectively online. It was cheaper, more timely, and created less landfill. Design on the web was more consistent with CSS, content management systems made updates instant, and more importantly high-speed internet was no longer a rarity.

Each year in America, 2 billion magazines (62 percent what gets printed), ends up unsold and in landfills. If you’re not a mathematician, that’s nearly 3 out of 4 printed. That doesn’t count the waste created by units people actually buy (yes, sometimes that still happens). The number of magazines saved by collectors and libraries aren’t significant in the scheme of things. The best estimates by experts of all-things-Green say that only 60% of paper gets recycled. I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, or an overly Green individual, but it doesn’t take a scientist to see that all that paper might be unnecessary.

Magazine Publishers are in scramble mode. They aren’t quite sure how to monetize the digital age. As a last gasp, they’ve taken out a print ad campaign, touting the virtues of print (to people that still read print). Brilliant. They note that print still has 300 million paid subscribers (so if you adjust for inflation it’s likely more like 150 million). What they fail to point out is that the Internet has 1.8 Billion users. Latin America has as many Internet users as print has paid subscribers. And Internet numbers are quantifiable. The Internet is a much larger audience, and if they would accept it, they could do great things with it.

Publishers like Bonnier have recently been hyping up statistics / print numbers that on the surface look really great. Transworld Business, a Bonnier-owned publication actually just posted some of these numbers today under the title “Magazines Aren’t Dying; Read the Truth.” Again, on the surface you’d think wow, things are on the up and up. While they didn’t take it out and try to hide it, they also didn’t exactly point out that those numbers are from 2008. A lot has changed since 2008 in the digital world. Unfortunately the Magazine Publishers of America, the organization that generated the data Transworld highlights hasn’t updated their numbers since releasing its 2009 kit (thus 2008 data). Oops. In fact, TransWorld quietly killed off one of it’s own publications (Quad) in 2009. I guess there is some fitting irony that a print publisher would publish these numbers on the internet to save print, roughly a year and a half after the numbers were released.

2008 this is not. The Magazine Publishers of America, in fact, just added a Digital section to its Web Site to help transitioning Publishers adjust to the coming digital age. They clearly understand the change. Hopefully their members will soon.

I’ve been posting a lot of original content/photos on here and on other sites that I could have saved for exclusive print use. Print magazines, at least in action sports, are concerned that contributions aren’t going to be seen prior to the magazine’s release. This use to be justifiable. But I think that’s changed, as all media has changed. So why not just hold stuff for print? There are a lot of answers to that question, but audience has been a big influence on my decisions to “let content out of the bag” online immediately. I’m not arguing that images shouldn’t go to print, I’m arguing that in many cases they are no less valuable to a print audience if they’ve been viewed on line. In many cases the two uses can benefit each other. One is a quality, tactile experience, the other is immediate.

Another upside to posting online is I can be my own editor. Magazines are — and should be — extensions of the people who produce them. Every photo editor has his or her own vision, and a style of image/subject they prefer. That doesn’t always mesh with what I think makes a good image, so here I can make my own decisions. I don’t have to worry about what’s “cool” in other peoples mind. This is not to say I intend to immediately publish everything I shoot on the web, it’s an explanation of why, in my opinion it’s a valid outlet, and wouldn’t make those photos any less relevant to a print use down the road (again, in my opinion). Of course, with contributions to other online sites there are photo editors who will make choices on usage.

The third, and one of the most important aspects to delivering content to an online audience is the ability to create online dialogue with viewers immediately. Comments back and forth ad a new dynamic between viewers and the content. Reader mail in print just didn’t have the same energy. Viewers can not online interact with the content, they can share opinions with each other. For better or worse, it’s a new frontier.

Print publications are limited in terms of audience. This is a fact.
Printing runs and distribution confine the audience of a print publication. Even in a media-rich city like Portland, Oregon, I often have to seek out print titles when I’m looking for them. Newsstand options are shrinking, so the audience narrows more each day. While that fact is disappointing, it is a reality. And it’s not a print is dying argument, it’s a “Media as we know it is dying” argument. Online media is changing as fast as print. Music, film… all this stuff is changing. New methods of delivery are altering the way information is consumed. And that information needs to hit now. Beyond that, user interaction with that information online brings content to the next level.

I’ve had a few experiences lately where budget-restricted print publications have held onto photographs with the intention of using them in upcoming issues. For whatever reason, if they decide not use them at some point (be it for contributor budget reasons, content reasons, etc.) it’s often months down the line before I find that out. In today’s world, by then the shots are dated. From a photography standpoint they can still be great, but from a timeliness standpoint they’re not as relevant to a viewer. People expect information right away. And with the new methods of delivery, they deserve it.

The internet provides an exponentially larger audience.
About 24% of the World’s population are internet users. That is roughly 1.6 Billion people. From 2000-2008 the World’s internet usage numbers grew 342%. In the scheme of the World population it’s a small chunk (1/4) that are internet users, but in the scheme of audience, 1.6 million people with potential access to content posted online is significant. Even if you believe the print mantra that 4-6 people read every distributed copy of a magazine, that still limits an Action Sports publication to a very small audience.

Now, by no means are 1.6 billion people looking at the content on this site. But the fact is, they do at least have access to the content. I’m increasingly suprised at the searches that lead people here, and the sites that send their audience to specific stories. A site in Russia can easily link its audience to a post on my site, and viewers can see the information immediately. It’s impressive how information is exchanged and how easily it all happens.

A few months back I started experimenting more with what sort of real audience would be seeing things if I posted them here. I can immediately feed that content to an audience via Twitter, Facebook, etc. In BMX alone, with endemic sites like The Come Up, Vital, Defgrip, BMXOnline, and more, I often get links into the content/photos I’ve posted, resulting in a large viewing audience. An immediate audience. Those sites get viewers because they post links to great content (and content of their own) and I’ve gotten a lot of viewers from them in return. But it’s not just happening with sites like that. Last months NotCot picked up on a my Bicycle Portraits, and within 24 hours I had over 3000 new unique visitors who not only looked at those photos, but others as well. So in reality a new audience could be seeing BMX photos for the first time.

But I don’t make any money from posting the photos here, do I? Magazines pay for photos.
That depends how you look at it. Photographers, artists, and general people (especially self employed people) today have to look at themselves as a brand. Professional BMX riders or skateboarders are also a brand. Artists market that brand to consumers (clients) and build a name through the work they do. BMX riders are representing their personal “brand” as well as their sponsors. So audience is vital. I get work based on the work people see and the larger that audience is, the more people who can potential demand your work. Advertising clients use search engines to find photographers, designers and more. They look at current sites like NotCot. So posting stuff here is essentially brand building.

In reality, shooting an Action Sports photo can cost a photographer like myself several hundred dollars, even if there are no “direct production costs.” What? Despite the fact that I love BMX bikes and have been around them all my life, in reality, I have to consider the billable hours that accumulate if I go out to shoot a photo. Add that to the depreciation cost of the vast amounts of gear you need (even minimal gear will cost you several thousand dollars these days from a DSLR to a computer to process), those photos don’t happen for free. So if a photo costs me a few hundred dollars to produce, even if it runs in a BMX magazine I lose money… even if it’s a cover (Note: this concept doesn’t apply to larger non-endemic magazines I shoot for like Sports Illustrated and ESPN who’s page rates are much higher, but again, they cater to a larger audience). Over the years of doing this, that’s always just been a cost of doing business. The editorial has never been a money maker, it’s essentially been advertising for the photographer’s brand. That said, online content sites need to be paying usage fees to use images just like magazines do. Afterall, depending on visit counts, that larger potential audience can lead to large ad revenues. I’m definitely not suggesting online media deserves handouts. After all, I don’t want to pay for someone else to make money off my work.

This isn’t to say I’m not giving stuff to magazines anymore, but I do think they need to get over the exclusivity thing. Does seeing a photo online devalue holding a printed version in your hands??? I don’t think so at all. It’s two different beasts. In reality, most of the stuff you see in those magazines has already been online in some capacity. People have blogged about it. There have been web edits from the same shoot or trip… while you’re not seeing the exact photo, you’re not in for a suprise when you see the magazine. In fact, magazines could be using online content to their advantage.

Recently I posted all my shots from the Old School BMX Reunion on this site. I also contributed many of the same photos to Dig Magazine. While people had seen those photos here, I don’t think they were any less important to them when they saw them in print. In fact, they also got promotion out of it. I posted notes on my Twitter and Facebook pages noting that you could check out those photos in the latest issue of Dig. And people responded to those posts with positive comments.

Print HAS to mesh the old (print) with the new (web) and use the audience to its advantage if it’s going to survive. The same goes for photographers, sponsored riders, and anyone doing any sort of business. Personally, I think a photo posted here has as much if not more benefit to a rider and myself than print alone. I also don’t think if it’s seen here, it’s any less relevant to a print publication. But that’s up to them to decide.

I should note, that have a loose plan to self publish a print piece at the end of the year/early next with my favorite images from the previous year or so, published or not. Sort of magazine style. That way the images of my choice are in print as well. Yes, that costs money, but print costs are lower than they’ve ever been, and it can be absorbed as advertising cost. A loose plan, which may change as media evolves.

I don’t want yesterday’s news. It’s not that what happened yesterday isn’t relevant, it’s just that I’ve already seen it and read it several times over the course of, well, yesterday. Google News, Yahoo, BBC, Twitter, RSS feeds, Yelp, etc… Timely news is on my desk almost immediately as it happens. Thus is the very problem with daily newspapers, a market which dwindling — daily.

So what about weeklies? We have two alternative weeklies here in Portland: The Portland Mercury and the Willamette Week. Other major cities have at least one as well: The Boston Phoenix, Village Voice, LA Weekly, Austin Chronicle, they are everywhere. Distributed for free, they’re generally full of locally focussed feature articles with skewed locally focused advertising. By design and by content they’re often more progressive than their daily cousin. They give a reader something to do at lunch. Or at the coffee shop. Or the bus stop. They’re as much entertainment outlets as they are news. They cover everything from politics to what’s going on in arts and entertainment that week.

While some weeklies like the Boston Phoenix have weathered the economic downturn (and the current internet trends) by cutting sections — the Phoenix cut from four sections per week down to two mostly black and white — others like LA’s City Beat have pulled the plug. But for the most part they seem to be weathering the the collapse of newspapers, albeit while suffering from some cutbacks, at least for now.

The Austin Chronicle (who’s founders also started the SXSW conference) saw $8.5 million in revenue last year. Only a 7 percent drop from the previous year. No layoffs. No plans for layoffs. In Austin, the Chronicle is part of the culture.

Local papers depend less on national advertisers than major metro dailies. They rely on bars, restaurants, and clubs — businesses from the community — the major advertisers balance them out. What has, however, driven all papers downhill is the near disappearance of classified advertising. Once a huge source of revenue, newspaper classifieds have gone the way of Craigslist and other free services which reach more people immediately. When I worked for a subsidiary of the Boston Phoenix in the mid-’90s classifieds accounted for a number of employees (to take the classified ads from customers) and an entire section of the weekly paper, plus assorted areas throughout. Each classified word represented revenue for the paper. Again, Craigslist is free.

Weekly newspaper content is often more directed at a communities core-culture, than it is focussed on news delivery. The stories weather the course of a week well. And they’re free. Weeklies that are resonating with readers have bridged the new media gap, keeping time sensitive news in online forms, getting writers active blogging, and creative online alliances and partnerships.

What weeklies have going for them is that people are still reading them, and at least in the major markets, that doesn’t seem to be changing. The terminal disease of the daily doesn’t seem to be effecting them. At least yet.

So, are weeklies going to last?

Related:
Read about print magazines that have fallen: magazinedeathpool.com
Seattle Post Intelligencer’s recent demise.
LA’s City Beat’s shutdown.

16×20 Silkscreen Print. Orange ink on White Cover stock. $25.

I did these t-shirts in 2001, which were featured in Adbusters magazine at the time. I did some paintings with the image a few years back and have intended to do some larger prints of it for years, but until now hadn’t gotten around to it.

I just did a small edition of 15, artist printed in orange ink on 16×20-inch white paper. They are available after the jump using the paypal button (paypal allows you to also use credit cards. Consume!) Prints are signed and numbered. $25.

I will be printing another edition of 50 with gold ink, but there will only be 15 of the orange. Get ‘em while they’re hot. Photo above is an actual print.

Due to the irony of selling something with the motif of consumption, I’m keeping these relatively inexpensive.

Orange Ink prints are now sold out. I’ll be running gold ink prints soon, so feel free to check back then.

The US magazine market, for the last decade and a half, has been saturated with formulaic advertising driven publications, designed more to grab your attention on the newsstand than be visually appealing. They’re littered with “eye catching” cover lines and filled with the hottest products on the market (coincidentally all of those products seem to have advertised as well). There are exceptions to the rule, but unfortunately big advertisers of today shy clear of anything progressive, interesting, or opinionated.

The overseas market is a bit different in that design is much more of a consideration (this applies to much more than publications), and for that reason the expensive “import” magazines tend to look stunning on US shelves. But for US publishers it all comes down to money, and a handful of large publishers control 70% of the magazine circulation market in the states. So unfortunately their formulas rule our shelves.

I have a pretty large collection of magazines, spanning a couple decades, and I go back to them pretty regularly. The internet is great for many things, but I still like the tactile experience of magazines, and even if magazines were to go away entirely (which I don’t see happening soon), at least I still have these…

Speak

Speak was one of my all-time favorites. It was released in the late 90s, and carried on into the early 2000s. Speak was art-directed by Martin Venezky, and focused on everything from fashion to literature to art to modern culture. The design was experimental, and the typography was always interesting, and challenging the rules. There was a brief redesign period by David Carson, and then Venzky was back at the helm after a few issues. The photo shows the evolution in size from issue 1, to the later issues.

Freestylin’

I started riding BMX bikes in 1983 or so, and still do. Growing up, Freestylin’ was the bible for “freestylers” as they were then known (now it all gets lumped into BMX) and even skateboarders, as the content focused on both subcultures. I still have a whole load of early Freestylin’ mags as well as its sister publication BMX Action, all the way through when they eventually restructured into a new magazine called Go: The Rider’s Manual which eventually folded. This magazine is probably the biggest reason I’m still involved in BMX. Eventually I went on to be an editor/photographer at Ride BMX magazine, and without Freestylin’ that path wouldn’t have been paved.

The late 80s Freestylin’ “master cluster” of Andy Jenkins, Mark Lewman, and Spike Jonze put out a magazine that truly reflected what “freestyle” meant, and have since gone on to work on some of the most creative projects our culture has seen.

Recently, Freestylin‘ released a retrospective book in collaboration with Nike.

Note: As you can see above Freestylin‘ actually became Freestyle for… one issue.

Raygun

Raygun probably had more impact on graphic design than any other modern-day publication. Love it or hate it, David Carson turned the magazine into a visual experiment, using unorthodox typographic treatments, even setting one story entirely in the typeface “Zapf Dingbats” simply because he thought it was a terrible article and didn’t want anyone to have to read it. His approach of using intuition over a traditional grid system for design through the conservative typographers of the world into a tizzy, and influenced a slew of new designers creating the “grunge movement” in graphic design.

Raygun‘s (and Carson’s) significance transcended the often snobby world of graphic design, and influenced contemporary culture and “Generation X” as a whole. Raygun was the sister publication to music/culture magazine Bikini. Founder Marvin Scott Jarrett went on to co-found Nylon Magazine with supermodel Helena Christensen.

Blue

Another David Carson creation — he was a co-founder and the original design director — was a travel magazine billing itself as the “Journal for the New Traveler.” Blue was a travel magazine directed at real people, not necessarilly the rich, who enjoyed real life things like surfer, mountain biking, etc.

Blue was well designed, and somewhat experimental early on, but not nearly on the level of some of Carson’s other editorial projects. This cover is one of my favorites.

Big Brother

Big Brother was the  controversial skateboard magazine started by Steve Rocco out of contempt for the other publications on the market. Rocco wanted to do what he wanted, and he did. The magazine gained mainstream attention/criticism for articles such as “How to Kill Yourself” and its Gay issue. Prior to getting bought by Larry Flynt, the magazine did a string of controversial and offensive covers, which were, for lack of a better word, brilliant. The creative team behind Big Brother went on to produce the “Jackass” series on MTV, followed by “Jackass the Movie”.

Loft: The Club Homeboy Zine

Another creation from Jenkins, Lewman and Jonze, Loft was the zine for members of “Club Homeboy” which the crew from Freestylin’ started. All this eventually morphed into Homeboy magazine, which focussed on skate, BMX, and related culture. There are a ton of old ‘zines in my collection but this one stands out.

Baseline

My shelves are full of design magazines, but Baseline is one of my favorites. These issues from the late 90s are printed on heavy stock in an interesting over sized format. Pure typography inside.

Emporio Armani: Multiplicity

Another David Carson art-directed piece, an Emporio Armani “magalogue” from the late 90s. Great images and typography throughout.

Colors

Colors was a publication funded by Benneton, and directed early on by influencial designer Tibor Kalman. Colors focused on multiculturalism and global awarness, and used bold imagery and typography to communicate its message. This magazine is still published and available on large newstands.

Emigre

Another influencial design publication, Emigre was put out by the type foundry of the same name, designed by Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Liko. It was a journal of design and experimental typography which evolved throughout the years, at one point packaging a cd of music.

Emigre became known as much for the magazine, which pushed the limits of publication design, as for it’s well-designed typefaces which include Mrs. Eaves, Template Gothic and Filosofia.

Dirt

Another Jenkins, Lewman, Jonze collaboration, Dirt was heralded as “Sassy for Boys” and came as a supplement to Sassy. This one I mostly kept for the Mr. T interview, and the Master Cluster connection to Freestylin’. The coverline “Macho Overload” is pretty epic.

Level

My british friends, or mates as they would say, Mark and Chris Noble of 4130 publishing put this one out in the late 90s early 2000s. 4130 was known best as the publisher of UK BMX magazines like Invert and Ride BMX, and eventually added other titles like skateboard magazine Document, a motocross magazine called Moto, Dig BMX magazine, and a mountain bike magazine called Dirt. 4130′s venture in the lifestyle/culture magazine genré was a clean, simply designed magazine called Level which inspired current magazines such as Anthem. A dozen or so issues were published before putting the book on hiatus. 4130 was sold last year, however Chris tells me he still owns the name Level, so financial backers step up!

Punk Planet

I kept two issues of Punk Planet over the years, both design issues. Punk Planet’s DIY ethic was inspiring to anyone working in publishing, (or at least to me) and their conent tackled everything from music to politics. Ironically, Punk Planet’s designer of several years, Josh Hooten, now owns Herbivore, a vegan clothing and publishing company in the same building as my studio. Check out Herbivore magazine, and buy some of their t-shirts.

Endangered Species

This is an obscure one in my collection. Endangered Species was a free music publication when I lived in Boston in the mid-late ’90s. Shepard Fairey, at the time was an up-and-coming artist in the skate scene in New England. His “Andre the Giant has a Posse” stickers started popping up everywhere along with stenciled giant heads… Around Boston and Providence, the “giant heads” were getting noticed and people were starting to ask “what does that mean?” Shepard was a far cry from design campaign posters for the future president, but locally people were picking up on him.

I liked Shephard’s way of getting people thinking, and held onto some of his work over the years. This cover was the fairwell issue of Endangered Species. Fitting.

Plazm

Plazm is one of my all-time favorites, and while it’s still around, the 90s were its heyday. Published by a collective of designers in Portland, Oregon, Plazm has collaborated with and featured work from legendary designers like Art Chantry, Rebeca Mendez, David Carson, Milton Glaser, Modern Dog, and Ed Fella.