Essay draft

What is the role of print media in the digital age?

With the introduction of modern-day smartphones and tablets, the role of print media has been in question. Print media has played such an important role in everyday life, as it seems that you can’t walk down a high street without seeing posters and billboards or being handed handouts on the streets. This in itself has greater effects on the everyday consumer as it’s something they will always see on a daily basis and the fact that it’s something they get to interact with it means that it leaves a longer impact than that of most form of digital media. There’s just a certain aspect of print that has a way of invoking feelings with in the consumers, whether it’s the surface gleam from a billboard, to the feel of the type of paper from items such as books and leaflets, each one leaves a lasting impact on the consumer. However, over the last 10 years print media has lost ground in this digital media boom, facing competition from the latest technology, internet, social media and many other forms of digital media. With this essay looking into the what role print media has to play in this over digitalised age, we need to get a brief understanding of what forms of print are in use.

The likes of newspapers are an important source of keeping up with the news of the world. There is a wide range of different types of newspapers that are around, including local, regional or national titles published in daily, evening, weekly or Sunday editions. Each newspaper target different audiences with a mix of content, often including sports, entertainment, business, fashion and politics. Each paper Advertisers can buy different sizes of advertising space within newspapers, from to ads featuring text, photographs, illustrations and graphics in sizes up to a full page or even a double-page spread to grab the reader’s attention. This is one of the cheaper options for companies to advertise themselves within to the public, as it can just require a one-time payment while they would have to pay a continuous fee to use certain online advertisement sites.

Where newspapers are created to inform readers of news from all over the world, Magazines have a more direct approach by focusing on a smaller target area such as fashion or technology. Magazines come in a variety of different styles which can be elegant and modern like, such as the fashion bible vogue, to the cheap and busy such as OK! Magazine. These offer advertisers extensive choices of readership and frequency. Consumer magazines cover a wide range of interests, including sport, hobbies, fashion, health, current affairs and local topics. Many business and trade magazines provide coverage of specific industries, such as finance or electronics. Others cover cross-industry topics, such as communications or human resources, while still others focus on job-specific areas, such as publications for executives, marketing professionals or engineers. Publishing frequency is typically weekly, monthly or quarterly. As with newspapers, advertisers can take advertising spaces from classified ads to full page ads in black and white or colour.

While the likes of newspapers and magazines have a more of an interactive feel approach as it has the consumers flicking through the pages, Billboards are the advertising way of making you take in certain information on your everyday routines. Advertising on billboards and posters gives the advertisers the opportunity to reach consumers on the move without them noticing at times. Putting posters in retail areas, as this helps advertisers reach consumers close to the point of purchase. Posters or billboards in train stations, airports or busy town centres have the potential power of reaching much larger groups of consumers at once to convey a message. Advertisers can change the messages on billboards and posters at a frequency of their choice to get across the next message to the mass public. And then there’s the likes of Post // handouts (such as flyers, mail, leaflets, cards, ect) which gives the advertisers power to direct messages to make them reach smaller target audiences or selected groups to make the advert seem like it is meant for the individual. Direct mail often be, and not restricted, to the form of a letter, brochure or flyer sent via the postal service. Advertisers can compile their own list of prospects and customers for the mailing, or rent a mailing list from a specialist firm.

The print publishing industry is going through a period of intense change brought about in part by the digital revolution of the 21^st century. The need for print media in terms of advertising and marketing is still very much needed within our digital lives. Print media has much more of a feeling and interacts with the consumers more with the likes of the textures and smells of magazines having an effect on why they are bought. People who buy the likes of books and other printed sources have more than one of their senses stimulated. Due to the likes of books being made up of ink, paper and adhesive, they create an organic, volatile compound which creates the appealing smell that effects the consumer. The reasoning for this smell being so appealing is that these publications have a hint of vanilla to them which scientist’s explanation of it state that almost all paper contains lignin. This has been utilised in publications as this smell will invoke consumers to be reminded of their past as your brain links these scents with possibility of an item, a person, event or even just a certain feeling. Because this is, Printed books // newspapers // ect have a certain appeal to the consumer which the likes of tablets and eBooks most certainly lack. So much so, companies such as ‘smell of book™’ have utilised the renowned book smell and have incorporated it with the likes of Amazon’s kindles with what they call ‘an aerosol E-Book enhancer’ to make these E-books more like their print counter parts to increase sales. The article, ‘Paper is back’, sees Frank Catalano look into both digital and print books, and looks into why books are making a comeback. Looking into what differences they have, he states, ‘Multiple studies find that we pitiful humans seem to read differently when given the same text on a screen instead of on a page – and are distracted more easily – so less of what we read sticks.’ He uses the research paper, E-Textbook Effectiveness Studied, from James Madison University to further this point as they have concluded that readers will skim through text on a digital format quickly and repeatedly, while using eye-tracking software shows that printed books are read line-for-line. As a result of that, the content of eBooks will take longer and requires more effort to reach the same level of understanding. Once we start thinking of book, both Formless Content and Definite Content, in the context of new digital reading tools, it becomes clear that we need to start thinking differently about what books are and how they are produced. We need to reconsider not just the mechanisms of production, replacing one tool or system with another, as you might shift from a HB pencil to a ball-point pen. Instead, we need to reconsider the whole approach to the process of making a book into the thing it is: the creation, the consumption, and everything that happens around and in between.

Although, most people would think that the digital is the way to go to move forward to the next step of printed materials, the matter of fact is that the printed form will simply have to adapt and evolve to have a place in the this digital age. For instance, at the recent Consumer Technology Association early this year (CES) LG unveiled the bendy reliable OLED screen which can be rolled up as if it was a newspaper while it still able to continue to show a video image. LG believes that OLED will fundamentally change the future of our home and portable devices as they have announced that they will co-develop solutions for ink-jet printed OLEDs, specifically they will be able to optimize the DuPont's soluble materials for Kateeva's inkjet systems. The companies hope that this collaboration will enable then to offer a simple and highly-effective OLED TV printing process. This amazing piece of tech, while only just been unveiled and is still in development process, has already got people speculating that it could have the capability to replace newspapers // magazines in the many years to come as it possibility of being printed as paper.

Image of the OLED floor model at CES from Tech Radar

This is can also be linked in with the newspaper, The Guardian’s, article on ‘Digital magazines: how popular are they? In which Ami Sedghi looks at the sales from major journals which showed that digital editions of the printed journals had significantly lower sales figures than that of the printed editions. Looking at the figures gathered by the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) the overall print circulation and distribution has a significant difference in sales to that of the digital editions, e.g vogues sales with its printed magazines at 193,007 compared to their digital editions of a mere 7,601, which has a whopping 186,406 difference between them. Despite these giant leaps in the circulation of the digital editions of these publications, they still fall short of the gap created gap created by the decline with in the printed circulation. In other words, this apparently huge rise in the circulation of digital editions is not enough to offset the bigger decreases created from the printed editions. But, as John Reynolds states, ‘comparing digital sales only figures with the overall circulation totals would paint a very different picture. Reporting on the profits of Condé Nast, Josh Halliday wrote: ‘Copies sold on Apple iPads and other tablets are, of course, where the growth is, but those editions still account for a fraction of overall sales and still fail to offset the decline in print. Digital sales of Vogue, for example, have grown by 3,898 copies since the second half of 2012 (3.78% of its total circulation) against a fall of 10,349 print copies at £3.99 apiece’ which goes to show that while print forms are on the decline, it’s still leaving a huge sales milestone that digital media will have a long way to go to catch up.  

Related with this was the screening of a graphic design documentary was premiered at one of the country's oldest cinemas in Leeds, Hyde Park Picture House in the start of October. The documentary was entitled 'Made You Look' and it focused on the UK's ‘Do It Yourself’ graphics art scene and interviewed some well-known artists and creative businesses including:. Throughout the film, everyone interviewed expressed their views and thoughts on how the impact of the digital age has affected both Illustration and Graphic Design by making creatives dependent on using computers now more than ever in the 21st century. It's under tone was to invoke designers to think if they have become too reliant on using computers to create work within the current digital age. After speaking to a current student studying graphic design, they stated that they have never actually created any traditional print based pieces of work

Within the screening, there was a question and answer session with the director of the film and a few independent artists, who spoke highly of the various techniques whilst still acknowledging the power of working on a computer.  Anthony Peters said something that stuck with me after the event.  He said "Work that's been made with a computer will always look nice but work created with screen prints and techniques like it have more character to them, there may be some little mistakes or smudges on it and it might even have finger prints of the artist who made it all over the back, but that's what makes the work special.  It’s a one of a kind. You don't get that with computer printed work."

One way print media has been trying to keep relevant is by having itself linked to its digital media counterpart. For instance the use of QR codes on the likes of posters can drive consumer traffic to websites in a quick and effective way. This has been further implemented the likes of Augmented Reality (AR) which creates 3d images when scanned on. Statistics have shown that campaigns that combine printed resources with internet advertising yield up to a 25% higher response rate than using internet alone, according to the Direct Marketing Association. Typefaces within Print mediums have much more credibility with the consumer while the internet seem to be lacking this, it just seems that with print has a sense of being more trustworthy than that of digital content. In fact many studies have shown that print is still considered more credible with the vast majority of the public than online material. This is down to the fact print is more permanent, it has to be made to last, while the web is fluid, it changes constantly, information can be rewritten very easily or even deleted by anyone.

There is no doubt that the future will be more even more digital than that of today. The goal that the world of print will have to try and achieve is to have the ability so it can keep up by looking at the differences that each form of media has and instead of working to be more like the other, to be instead, work to incorporate each other in each of their mediums to further their own strengths and to work on their weaknesses. Within the book, Print is Dead: Books in our digital age, Jeff Gormez writes: ‘A blank piece of paper and a computer screen when it’s off have something in common: both are empty, devoid of content, ripe with possibility’. Saying that both have a duty of conveying anything from photos, comedy, tragedy etc., the possibilities are endless. He also states, ‘but while you can only fit so much onto one piece of paper, a computer screen can be an inexhaustible source of endless information. The computer screen has become a gateway, forever replenishing itself by either scrolling or replacing old information with the newest, latest, pieces of relevant information’ which relates to the challenges that print will have to face. For instance, while a print book is a beautifully simple piece of technology to us, the likes of an electronic book is a more complex technology. An eBook requires a computer, e-Reader or tablet, and a power source to keep the device fully charged and usable. It requires computer access to a website or digital catalogue where files can be downloaded, and an understanding of how to use it. Where books have you physically picking up a page and turning it over, where computers get you to click for the info, and tablets have its readers pinched and swiped, movements that will have to be learned, and vary between all of the different devices and brands. You will need to be able to keep up with the constant development and updating of all of these devices and programs, and understand the value and limitations of each of these different devices, formats and suppliers. With the digital impermanence comes two concepts that are key to the future of the printed media: we can continuously develop a text in real time that erases the preciousness imbued by printing, and authorship becomes in question as this seems to get lost the info gets passed around the digital space. Wikipedia is a fully realized example of how the digital world we live in drastically affects authorship as literally anything can be read, re read, edited uploaded, edited again. This means that the world within the digital space becomes untrustworthy as you can’t fully rely on the source compare to the factual info you can find in books that have to be checked in order for it to make it out into the hands of the public. The quality of the paper, the resolution of the display, the design for the books front covers, and the overall interface used to highlight info are all aspects that are all liked together with how a designer would have to create work to fit in either of these methods that if combined, these systems have the potential to become a united form of media that will shape how information will be received.

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