The Rise of E-Print
The iPad. Kind of a big deal, wouldn’t you agree? At this time of this writing, Apple has sold over a half-million iPad devices, along with millions of apps and e-books on their new iBooks platform. Prior to the iPad’s debut, I wrote an article detailing why I think the iPad will be a game changer. I still agree, and now that we’ve had a chance to see the iPad in action, I believe there will be a major shift in how we consume media. It’s not just about the iPad, it’s about a whole new form of media. The iPad, and other tablet devices will usher in the era of E-Print. I doubt very much that I’m the first to coin that term, but it’s a concept that I think we’ll become more and more familiar with as the years go by. Let’s look at what E-Print is, why it matters, and what we can expect from it.
History
Over a half-century ago, there was a major shift in how we experienced media and information. The average American family went from listening to their household radios to watching television. The shift from radio media to television media was a significant event, so much so that many years later the average person still consumes the bulk of their media diet through their televisions. Over the last decade we’ve seen the percentages decrease as more and more access information through the internet and more recently through phones and mobile devices, but for the last six-plus decades TV has been king.
If we look at the history of media, one form that hasn’t changed a whole lot in the past 100 plus years is print. Though production technology and visual design has advanced significantly, newspapers are still very much the same as they were a century ago, books still require the turning of a page to read further, and magazines share the same general format. It stands to reason then, that the print medium is long overdue for a radical shift, and that is exactly what is happening.
The next 3-5 years will be the tipping point for E-Print media, and just as the shift from radio to television changed the game for publishers, advertisers and consumers alike, the same will hold true in the print industry.
What It Is
E-Print media is interactive published content, accessible through the web on mobile devices. This content can include e-books, e-magazines, e-newspapers, and interactive applications. Just like traditional print media, we’ll be able to “touch” and interact with the content, though in much more advanced ways. You may be asking yourself what’s the big deal? You may prefer to hold a paperback in your hands, rather than read an e-book, or flip through a newspaper instead of reading stories through an RSS feed. So if we can interact with traditional print media already, why should we make the shift to E-Print? It’s a valid question, why should we care?
Here are 5 key components of E-Print media that will help show us why we should care:
Why It Matters
1. Interactivity
I’m the kind of person who still likes to hold a book in my hands or flip through a magazine. There’s just something about being able to turn the page, make notes in the margins, and paint mental images of what you’re reading. So it would take a lot to get me to change my habits. One element that would get me to change is the interactivity factor. The biggest shift from traditional print media to E-Print media will be how much more interactive E-Print content will be. Check out this example of a new Alice and Wonderland app/book to get an idea of what I mean. No longer will our interaction be between our minds, our eyes, and the printed page. We’ll be able to use our hands, our fingers, manipulate the content, watch embedded videos, play games, and view ads all in an interactive environment that stimulates our senses more than ever before. This is huge. We are an “entertain me” culture, and E-Print will bring more entertainment to the once mundane actions of simply reading a page.
2. Design
We see, experience, and make decisions with our eyes. Visual design is one of the most important elements in print media. Most of the time we, as average consumers, don’t realize what “good” design is, but put something that is poorly designed in front of our faces and we’ll be turned off before we can blink. That’s why book covers are so important, it’s why newspapers spend so much time on typography design and layout, and it’s why magazines have entire departments dedicated to art direction. E-Print takes all of the creative talent, skill, and strategies and opens up literally a limitless medium in which to work and play. Up until this point designers were limited by the printing press – now published content can be designed without worrying how it might look on paper. Moreover, E-Print brings other creatives to the table, such as website designers, application developers, animators, videographers, and programmers.
3. Integration
One of the most profound elements in E-Print media is the ability to integrate multiple forms of media into one application. The video below from Wired magazine showcases how this is done. Notice how the reader interacts with several different forms of media, from the written word to design elements to video. And how cool is interactive advertising? This alone is a huge game-changer – instead of just having a car ad with a static image on a page, imagine if you were able to turn the car 360 degrees, or push a button and the car turned into an interactive video. This ain’t your grandma’s advertising anymore folks, E-Print opens the door to incredible user experience through multiple streams of media.
4. Aggregation
Okay, so up to this point, everything I’ve said sounds pretty cool right? But at the end of the day, just because something is really cool doesn’t mean it’s practical. I mean, take the Segway for example…it’s cool, but we all know how much that caught on. The next two elements deal with practicality. The first is aggregation. Devices such as the iPad allow for a very practical aggregation of content – essentially allowing us to pull all of the content we’re interested in into one place. Now we don’t have to carry around a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a phone, a computer, etc…We could literally carry around one or two devices that would aggregate all of that media for us, making our information consumption that much more enjoyable. This technology will only get better as the years go on, and it will do wonders for our overall print media experience.
5. Mobility
In my last article where I described the iPad as a game-changer, I covered the mobility element. As our information consumption becomes more centralized it also has to become more mobile. We won’t put up with sitting at our desktop to read the news anymore. We’ve solved the mobility issue in large part with the technological advancement in phones. I can do quite a lot on my iPhone. So is a device like the iPad necessary? Yes, and here’s why.
My iPhone is small.
Mobility and portability are essential, but so also is a good experience. The experience on the iPhone is awesome, but I’d rather surf the web, watch movies, and read books on a larger screen. Wouldn’t you? It doesn’t just have to be the iPad – it could be the new HP Slate, or one of the myriad of other tablet devices that are sure to come out in the near future. But the bottom line is the E-Print media means we become much more mobile which much more content, and that is a big deal.
What to Expect
So where do we go from here? The iPad and other devices have started to cover some ground, but we know it’s not ideal yet. But the rise of the E-Print medium fostered in large part by these new devices will begin to change the way we interact with and experience print media. Here are just a few ways this is happening and will continue to happen:
A) Interactive Books – as we saw in the Alice in Wonderland book example, books will become much more interactive through E-Print. Words will literally jump from the page, we’ll see more design and interactive elements placed inside books, and publishers will be able to integrate various forms of media such as video. In addition to just simply being really cool, this will heighten the user experience and allow authors to share more of what’s in their hearts and minds.
B) Interactive Ads – a couple of weeks ago Apple came out with a new advertising platform called iAds which allows advertisers to create interactive ads to be placed inside applications designed for the iPhone and iPad. As we saw in the Wired video, this type of platform and technology will allow advertisers to create ads like never before. Ads will become literal applications, mini-websites, or video productions designed to draw the user in. This opens up a world of change, creating new niches for designers and developers, advertisers, brands, and consumers. This could be the tipping point for online advertising.
C) Better, Smaller, More Mobile Devices – E-Print won’t be a flash in the pan. As a result we’ll see companies embrace this technology and strive to produce better devices on which to consume E-Print media. Just like today’s computers are worlds better than those even a decade ago, tablet devices five years from now will be worlds better than the current iterations today.
It will take time to make the shift from traditional print to E-Print, and just like radio is still around today, I think we’ll always have traditional print in one form or another. But just as television surpassed radio, look for E-Print to do the same. And the results will be overwhelmingly positive.
