Mark Boulton

12 Responses to “The Death of Print. Again?”

1. 
   Régis said on: September 4th, 2007 at 10:34 am

   Dear Mark, I com­pletely agree with you, online read­ing will increase hugely in the near future, because people are more and more con­stantly in a hurry, don’t have time to turn their head from the screen–and of course because the medium won’t be a lim­it­a­tion any­more.

   As a side effect, I really hope that the real value of books and magazines will emerge and that people will con­sider read­ing print as a leis­ure rather than a task. 

   I per­son­naly am mad about (european) comic strips and I would replace any item on my book­shelf for noth­ing else on Earth; this is the same with qual­ity books and magazines.

2. 
   Søren said on: September 4th, 2007 at 11:06 am

   The real value of print media, as Régis puts it, will be their emo­tion­al­ity. Call it old­skool, but in my opin­ion, reclin­ing with a broad­sheet at the kit­chen table, accom­pan­ied by a cup of cof­fee, still feels more like read­ing news than check­ing a site online. 

   In the long run, prin­ted news will prob­ably lose out against the effi­ciency, inter­activ­ity and top­ic­al­ity of online media; how­ever, I doubt eBooks will push prin­ted books over the side for a while yet. No mat­ter how great they may be, I for one don’t feel any emo­tional ties to books I can­not grasp and feel with my hands.

   Am I too touchy?

3. 
   Khoi Vinh said on: September 4th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

   Mark, thanks a mil­lion for the kind com­ments on A Brief Mes­sage. It’s very grat­i­fy­ing that it’s received such a warm response from prom­in­ent design­ers like your­self. We hope to run some even more inter­est­ing and thought pro­vok­ing Mes­sages in the future, so stay tuned!

4. 
   Mark Boulton said on: September 4th, 2007 at 3:38 pm

   Credit where credit’s due, Khoi — it’s a great idea off to a great start. Can’t wait for the next piece.

5. 
   Josh said on: September 4th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

   I com­pletely agree with Mark. I am rather new to web design and design for that mat­ter and I have a great respect for print des­pite the fact I earn my liv­ing design­ing and build­ing web materials.

   All I know about design came from the mas­ters and they all worked with print. I read equal amounts of inked print and LCD print. I use each dif­fer­ently = well roun­ded mind. 

   That aside, even as tech­no­logy changes and people’s taste change for dif­fer­ent medi­ums, take a step back…be the raven and observe from a far, the per­spect­ive of the ant has its lim­it­a­tions too. 

   Thanks for the chance to comment, 

   Josh

6. 
   Mike said on: September 5th, 2007 at 2:49 am

   Re:A Brief Message 

   – 

   Am I miss­ing some­thing here?
   
   Sud­denly con­cise, well writ­ten con­tent is good?

7. 
   Mark Boulton said on: September 5th, 2007 at 3:18 am

   Mike: I think you might be miss­ing some­thing. My point was that A Brief Mes­sage provides a plat­form for short form design writing. 

   I’m sure you’re aware that quick sound-bites of great design writ­ing has been thin on the ground. Unless of course you shell out on Eye every few months, but even then, the art­icles are get­ting longer and more academic.

8. 
   Marius Ooms said on: September 5th, 2007 at 4:43 pm

   Just today I thought what shame it would be if I couldn’t read those books/magazines any­more while vis­it­ing my ‘indoor’ out­house. I guess you could use your mobile news reader, but it just wouldn’t feel the same. There’s some­thing about the ivory throne while hold­ing crisp paper. 

   Apart from that, as a designer I have to mix it up and design for print. Purely because I get fed up with semantics, browser issues, column lay­outs, font lim­it­a­tions, small screen res­ol­u­tions, color mis­matches, anti ali­asing, val­id­a­tion, scrip­ter­rors not to men­tion IE head­aches among other things. 

   Print is a design­ers porch of heaven where cre­at­ive free­dom rules. That’s why it will always exist, simply because it is beau­ti­ful and unparalleled.

9. 
   Shaal said on: September 11th, 2007 at 5:48 pm

   I’ve seen a sim­ilar post on Print by Veerle, i gave my thoughts there and so am i giv­ing it here… The Print industry will never end no mat­ter how big the online read­ers num­ber increases. Its about comfort,ease,etc… You never expect someone to read books,journals,newspapers online even if you have the best of the present­a­tion, the real fun read­ing is hard copy~ As long as people have that in mind the Print industry will live and develop as well~

10. 
    Régis said on: September 12th, 2007 at 2:02 am

    Shaal, as you poin­ted out, this is a mat­ter of com­fort, that is user exper­i­ence. If one day people feel more com­fort­able read­ing text on screen rather that on paper, they’ll switch and for­get their heavy­weight part­ners in favor of a few fit­ness bits. 

    Clearly, screens have less appeal than hard copy, books carry an emo­tional design that still out­stands any elec­tronic visual device by far.

    My opin­ion (I’m not the only one, respect to who it’s due) is that books are still bet­ter because read­ers use all their phys­ical senses while read­ing, touch­ing sweet grained paper with their fin­gers, smelling its per­fume and hear­ing the noise of pages get­ting turned. These are also the reas­ons why they can become lux­ury (read: rare) objects.

11. 
    Boris Kraloff said on: September 14th, 2007 at 9:20 am

    There is another thing worth men­tion­ing, it’s not dir­ectly print­ing but still…
    
    Have you noticed that almost every­one uses digital cam­era now and hardly any­one shows his pic­tures prin­ted? I get it all the time, I visis my friend, they show me pics from a trip to… and the we spend 3 hours watch­ing 4000 snaps taken on that trip. It’s anoy­ing now, if print is dead it’s gonna be unbearable.

    Cheers

12. links for 2009-11-12 said on: November 12th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

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