the internet is made of context.

I found the ad to the right looking at the latest iteration of This Magazine's website.  It looks great, and I like the magazine, so I have less than no problem using my blog as ad space for them.

Especially considering I plan on tearing the ad a new one.

This is the kind of argument that can only come from the devastatingly out of touch.  That This.org would use this specific quote to highlight the value of the magazine is painful.  It perfectly encapsulates the failure of traditional print publications to understand how information works today.

Not how information works online.  How information works TODAY, period.

Everything is, and has, context.  A link and a search box is access to unlimited context, if people are interested in finding it.  I'm not arguing that presenting an idea or opinion shouldn't have clear contextual information, but pretending that online is somehow predisposed against context ignores how information is sorted.

Even in the best print publication, there is limited space allotted for dissenting viewpoints.  Very often, they are presented only long enough to be dismissed, straw men to further emphasize the chosen perspective.  Similarly, the single, inane quote from a dissenter provides litter context or balance.

Online publishing is not "factoids of information devoid of context".  Nothing published online is devoid of context.  The internet is MADE of context.  Which is why it enforces transparency, updating, editing, and acknowledging other sources via linking.

I often think this is the real problem that many traditional media outlets have with online information - it's nearly impossible to do it right without drawing attention to, and acknowledging the validity of, competing sources of information and insight.

magazine design quirks.

One of my least favourite common elements of magazine design is the quote (usually edited in an odd manner) repeated somewhere on the page, as a visual element.

I guess I just don't get it.  If the point is to emphasize the quote, wouldn't it make more sense to do so completely, and in context?  Or to have some kind of visual link between the large image / quote and it's original place in the text?

I'm not saying this space should always be used for images, or that pages should be pure text.  I'm just arguing that this 'text as a visual element' think could be better used to add information, rather than just repeat it out of context.  Imagine using this space for footnotes with images, or for background information on the article subject, or further information on an abandoned tangent in the interview.

As it stands, I still think of this as something done purely for a visual boost, without being optimized.  And, frankly, the magazine industry isn't doing so well that they can afford to regularly put out a product with examples of waste by design on every other page.

Then again, I seriously doubt anyone gets as irked by this as I do.

transparency as product.

Wired is doing something very interesting with Storyboard, a beginning to end blogging of an upcoming peice on Charlie Kaufman (the dude who wrote Adaptation, among other screenplays).  In doing this, they are increasing reader involvement with the peice, advertising the upcoming issue containing the peice, and creating a new revenue stream from the article itself (advertising on the blog).  This is both creative and innovative.  And I wonder how well developed it could be in other creative media.

For example, imagine if an established band decided to liveblog the recording process, etc, of an upcoming record.  They could post half finished lyrics, snippets of vocal and instrumental tracks, videos of rehearsals and discussions, explanations of the process, etc.  While the money generated by advertising wouldn't be absurd, it would serve as a great introduction to the record.  For certain bands with a large enough following, people (read: Me) would be willing to pay some small monthly amount to get a password and login to access the page.  You could include it in the physical copies of a release, offering the feed for the next upcoming record.  Throw it in a greatest hits package, for example.

Print media isn't dead.  Music isn't dead.  But we have to change what we're selling, and how we're marketing it.  That said, I'll admit the idea wouldn't work outside of an established magazine, an article on an established personality, with an established audience.  But figuring out how to transfer old media success to new media success seems like an important step in figuring out how to create new media success stories from whole cloth.  Transparency as product might be a part of that future.

acne paper: brand extensions that are not advertising.

Style Salvage recently posted a great write up on Acne, maker of beloved jeans and now Lanvin collaborator. It’s definitely worth a read, if only for the section on Acne Paper at the bottom.
Acne Paper is, in my limited experience, totally amazing. It manages to teach you something about the ideas behind the brand, offer great (and non-commercial) fashion shoots, potential inspirations, etc. the best thing about it is what it isn’t.

It’s a branded product that doesn’t turn itself into a mass of advertising for the brand.

Acne Paper doesn’t really try to sell you Acne. Instead to offers you a glimpse into the background of Acne as a brand, the inspiration, ideas, and creative culture that makes it work. It’s a brand extension that isn’t advertising.

This is a different beast than brand extensions for a creative product, which are themselves creative products. This is a creative extension for a commodity product. And they did it without making the entire thing a glorified catalogue.

I have no doubt this was done for the love, not for a potential increase in market share. But these kind of actions lead to people seeing Acne as a signifier they want attached to themselves.

Vanity Fair stumbles into Social Media relevance.

Every once in a while, an dead-tree outlet does something that's either a beautiful accident, or a rare moment of brilliance. Vanity Fair seems to have one going on at this exact moment.

"Five weeks ago, when I started working as as editorial assistant here at VF.com, my boss casually mentioned that he was giving me until August 5 to attract 10,000 fans to the Vanity Fair Facebook page. It was an onerous and epic assignment, and I responded to it the way any sensible person would: I brightly answered “Yes, sir,” and then did nothing, hoping he would forget about it."

The actual idea is absurd, legislating a quota for something that is 1) opt in, and 2) offers no reward, is more or less a recipe for failure. The difference is that the larger picture, giving a new employee an impossible assignment, and having it incorporate social media in an integral manner, taps into the point of something like Facebook.

This isn't about Vanity Fair anymore. It's about Bill Bradley, it's about overbearing bosses who don't get it, it's about the way new media is being glued to anything with a faint pulse in hopes that it will be revitalized. Vanity Fair now has a story on Facebook, or more accurately, Bill Bradley has a story on Facebook that draws attention to Vanity Fair.

I'm assuming this is a well planned and low budget attempt to go viral, but given my job and my interests, I see campaigns where there are none all the time.

Still, it's a good lesson for anyone trying to figure this Facebook thing out; the point isn't to put your brand into a social network. The point is to attach your brand to a person, via a story, that creates associations. Social networks are about people. People are about things. But this order needs to be maintained to generate interest without coming across as a colonist.

infodensity and the modern media consumer.

Infodensity: When I talk about this, what I mean is the amount of information shared in a matter of time, or length of text, or conversation. Information density can thought of in an old media context as a matter of medium. As in, text in a novel is not at all dense, a textbook can be very dense, and TV shows have gotten denser over the last few decades

The modern media consumer: The most common thing you will hear from the uninitiated in terms of the current generation of media consumers, is that we don't have any attention span. They’ve been saying it since the MTV generation was actually a label that people cared about. The general assumption is that we deal with the landslide of information that gets thrown at us every day by not caring about anything.

This is a completely acceptable interpretation, up until the point you think about it.

In general, this is the most media-literate generation in history. More reading, more watching, and definitely more education, despite what parents say when they see the homework their kid brings home. Simply parsing this amount of information into what you care about and don't care about indicates an absolutely astounding level of understanding of media as information distribution. This isn't the generation that doesn't care; it's the generation that refuses to take any shit at all. Think about it. We’ve been parsing commercials from drama since birth, and we're already starting to parse product placement from genuine content. Why would we be willing to invest undue time in anything that wasn't going to be of use?

Old media doesn't get it, for the most part. Newspapers think they are invincible because they are an institution, but the keep shrinking and losing actual importance. TV news isn't about content, it's about sound bites. This is why it is watched, but still irrelevant. Magazines are probably the best thing old media has going for it, but they fall on their own sword in two places. First; they don't actually understand what they have, and second; they don't think it makes sense to demand that everything be selectively dense, even though most columns or articles have the base concept embedded in their structure.

Selective infodensity: The idea that something can be taken as a whole, or as elements, without automatically losing context, purpose, or value. In other words, the creation of a media experience that is only as time or effort intensive as the user demands. Something that has value at every level of interaction, as well as a greater total value.

The best example of selective infodensity in relation to old media forms is the magazine, as mentioned before. When you read a magazine article, you get the core text. This is the 'point' of it all. But you also get sidebars, images, image captions, and at times references to other articles, web links, sourcing footnotes, etc. Each of these elements adds something to the core text, while usually having some value of their own. However, it's important to note that this isn't perfect. The core article is usually not-so-dense to begin with, and often there's only a tangential connection between the secondary information, and the core. But, it's a start. You can read some of the side elements as stand-alone, or read just the core, and still have a media experience with value. Magazines are naturally tailored to allow a consumer to define their own level of interaction.

This is something that web media in particular, but most interactive new media forms, could excel at. But, this isn't an issue that I have seen discussed regularly in terms of the design of web media, especially that created for the sole purpose of sharing information.

Just something I'm toying with. These are ideas that are equally applicable to fiction and nonfiction. They are also ideas in their infancy. So. This requires further exploration.