The Joy of Print
Having spent my entire career working in digital media, it may seem like a counterintuitive move to eulogise the great tactile thrill I get from thumbing through my favourite print journal - each new page the ultimate soul-cleansing elixir.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my now scarily close to 40 years on this planet, it’s that whatever I’m saying, doing and thinking, there’s someone else in the world going through exactly the same experience – perspectives on print’s function and importance are beginning to converge.
Scratching around for any advantage to being ancient, I can remember the birth of content marketing programmes, when print programmes were being hastily transitioned to ‘all media’ equivalents with a view to binning print altogether.
Though video, visual and bitesize social content has since thrived and become an essential mainstay of any marketing mix, print has miraculously survived, much in the format I hoped it would.
Limited run, custom-bound, meticulously crafted and curated magazines are all around us, ranging from cultural beacons like Oh Comely to hybrid travel and fashion mags like Suitcase and Cereal, via the literary darkness of The Alarmist and Australia’s greatest ever export, Dumbo Feather.
As ever, a large factor in this particular pleasure is the chase, with coquettish glimpses of new titles catapulted into my social feeds on a daily basis – Avaunt being the latest, a beautifully-shot bible for global adventurers.
The key difference between then and now for print publishers is innovation – magazines are being marketed and distributed in ways only the social age could facilitate. This is a true marriage of analogue and digital – and it’s exciting.
Take Stack, for example, the subscription service that handpicks the best independent magazines from around the world relevant to your interests and delivers them to your door, but trains its marketing crosshairs on social, digital and radio.
Also consider Airbnb’s initial foray into print, Pineapple, which has been used by the brand to unite its community with an elegance the social web can’t compete with. Hosts and travellers collaborate on stories that form the magazine’s editorial spine, creating an axis of expedition and anthropology that digital publishing would struggle to articulate.
With big names in youth publishing like Hypetrak getting their print on, not to mention Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean releasing print magazines alongside their latest albums, I’m beginning to wonder whether print could actually outlive websites?
With social content hosting and custom print in the ascendency, traditional websites have never looked more clunky and anachronistic.
