I picked up the latest copy of Metropolis earlier this week with the intent of flipping through to check out the ads, see what’s new in the industry and ultimately get away from my computer screen from a few minutes. We’ve all heard the reasons why online media is replacing print– convenience, up-to-date, daily news, easy to find information, and permanent placement.
While every pub is scrambling to find the answer to these issues, Metropolis seems to be a step ahead of other magazines. Take the image below for example. If you view the enlarged version, you’ll see a cue taken from online media.
Across the top of the magazine page reads three topics (Industrial Design, Free Broadband and Alpine Capsule) the article below covers. However, these topics aren’t standard editorial topic groupings. Instead, they represent a print version of the tags you see attached to most blog posts (see the bottom of this post).
This is an interesting example of print taking a page from online media’s book, but Metropolis doesn’t stop there. Further along in the issue, the pub interviews soon-to-be grads about their career plans. Instead of the aged, text-based question and answer format, Metropolis again uses online formatting as a design cue. Featuring an avatar, name and brief info, the student’s reactions appear visually as many blog comments do:
The magazine even takes it one step further and includes an online call to action at the bottom of the page, asking readers to visit their site for more student responses. Unfortunately, everything Metropolis does in print to adapt to the online world seems to be forgotten in their Web site design.
Without going in great detail, the site’s home page is clustered, confusing and overwhelming. It’s hard imaging a pub clearly on the edge of evolving print design with an online presence that resembles quite the opposite.
I really enjoyed Bruce Sterling’s article, “Product Panic 2009″ (see this post’s first image) and wanted to email it to a friend, but it’s impossible to find on the site. Is this because Metropolis won’t put new content online, worried that readers will just turn to the Web site for information and drop their subscriptions? Every major newspaper in the country publishes new content even before it appears in print.
Print may be dying in our industry, but it’s not dead yet. Metropolis is proving that pubs have options, but if you can’t provide the whole package, print and web, you’re still behind.
Ultimately, trade pubs need to adapt only as fast as online media fulfills the immediate needs of their audiences. So far, I don’t think this is happening in our industry as quickly as it has in other elsewhere, but we’re running out of time.
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