Death by cake! The death of print

Double Standards

Whenever we hear the notion ‘The Death of Print’ we feel a little offended. Not that we don’t see magazines, newspapers and publishing houses struggling and running out of business left and right. But isn’t it rather a fact that these products lack of innovations and inspiration in their field? It is more that obvious that these printed matters, especially the established ones, are not using everything there is in their arsenal to even consider the advantages of print over digital. Call us romantics if you like, but it is an undeniable truth that the digital format irons out a hell of a lot of details you only get with print. One very obvious example is the weight of a book. The tablet or any other mobile devise weights the same all the time - but have you ever experienced the surprise lifting up a really thick book expecting it to be very heavy and then … the empty milk carton effect emerges. The way we’re arranging our book-, magazine- and record cover-archive is another example the digital format is lacking, and let alone the fetish and magic of the object. We could ramble on forever and we would like to ….. However, we feel there is still too little distinction between the two positions. Those who conjure up the death of print for over a decade are wrong because there is nothing more durable than the printed product, and those who are afraid of the digital products are not inventive enough to rethink the advantages. It is just a matter of how you want to look at the issue. It’s like the saga that took place during the race to the moon between the USA and CCCP. The americans invested about 1 million US$ to come up with the SPACEPEN, a ball pen that would write in space, under water and overhead because of its pressurized ink cartridge. A great invention, no question about it. But what did the Russians? They took a pencil with them to the outer space. There you go.