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.

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?

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!

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

Re:A Brief Message

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

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.

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~

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.

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