Pet Peeve - Portraititis in Electronic Documents
Yes, I admit to it, "Portraititis" is my pet peeve. The electronic document formatting that the whole world follows is wrong, and I want to change that. What I mean is this...why do people who put out electronic magazines - you know the ones that come in pdf form - in portrait form? The whole purpose of electronic distribution is so that we would be able to read it on our computers. And the last time I checked, the computer screen was laid out in Landscape format, NOT PORTRAIT Format!!
ESC magazine, one of my favorite magazines has this Portratitis. And today I came across a electronic magazine put out by a - of all people - DESIGN INSTITUTE which has the same disease. National Institute of Design puts out a magazine called CUT HERE. Now, Isn't National Institute of Design supposed to be thinking about design related issues? So how come they put out a publication that cannot be properly viewed on the computer screen?
I'll tell you why. Its because of lazyness. Yes, Lazyness plain and simple. What people are doing is that they take this publication that has been formatted for print, print it to a pdf writer, and make it available to the people on their website. I call it laziness because it does not take much time or effort to repurpose a publication for web delivery and computer reading.
So, get on with the times people. If you want people to read your publicaitons on the computer, make it easy for them to read them on the computer!
ESC magazine, one of my favorite magazines has this Portratitis. And today I came across a electronic magazine put out by a - of all people - DESIGN INSTITUTE which has the same disease. National Institute of Design puts out a magazine called CUT HERE. Now, Isn't National Institute of Design supposed to be thinking about design related issues? So how come they put out a publication that cannot be properly viewed on the computer screen?
I'll tell you why. Its because of lazyness. Yes, Lazyness plain and simple. What people are doing is that they take this publication that has been formatted for print, print it to a pdf writer, and make it available to the people on their website. I call it laziness because it does not take much time or effort to repurpose a publication for web delivery and computer reading.
So, get on with the times people. If you want people to read your publicaitons on the computer, make it easy for them to read them on the computer!
Comments
First, I want to thank you for the very nice words you had for my little publication back on November 5th.
With all respect to a kind reader, I do want to clear up some confusion concerning ESC! Magazine, the reasons for distributing it the way I do and what is defined in your blog as "Portratitis."
As a small press magazine with very limited distribution and even more limited budget, PDF vs. paper serves as a means to get the issue in as many hands as possible. It's a distribution method ONLY -- face it, you wouldn't be reading it if I didn't make it available for free download from my site. However, the fact that I distribute via PDF does not change the fact that the magazine is intended for print. Yes, it's MEANT to be printed. In fact, if you note the margin layouts, it's intended to be printed double-sided! ESC! Magazine was never, and will never, be intended for screen. If it was, I'd just slap up a website with all of the text from the "issue" on it and leave it at that. Then, I'm afraid, it would just be ugly. No, ESC!, is a print magazine ... not a webzine and, since I shoot for quality presentation of the author's works, I want people to read it off of a nice high resolution printed copy and not the 72dpi, headache inducing experience that a monitor screen provides. Eyestrain is not presenting the works of the authors in the best light possible! :)
Unfortunately, ESC! is not something I make a living on. You know that from reading my editorial in the Fall issue, but other readers of this blog may not. It's not my full-time job. It's something I do to help get deserving authors in the hands of more readers and it takes a lot of underfunded time to do one issue. Though I have a link on my site where folks can contribute to my efforts and I have a print magazine that folks can purchase if they truly want to experience the magazine as intended, with all the money that's come in so far I can purchase a Happy Meal from McDonald's.
Reformating the entire publication for screen as well as print means that I would have to create TWO complete and separate layouts of the magazine for each issue! As I'm sure you know, a webzine cannot be formatted the same way as a print one -- or simply printed in landscape mode. This is for many reasons, just one of which is that it needs to be reformatted into a single column or two wide columns and not the multi-column mode that I currently use for print. It's a completely different design. And since I'm concerned about the presentation of the works within, it would be a complete tear down of the issue and rebuild from scratch. In addition to that, a computer screen is not formatted with the same aspect ratio as a piece of landscape paper (4:3 vs 11:8.5) and that raises a lot of other design considerations in itself.
If I had the time or money to do TWO versions of each issue, I think I'd rather invest that time in releasing four issues a year instead of the two I do now and keep it the way it is.
The reasons behind distributing the PDF the way I do has nothing to do with laziness, however, and I guess that is the main thing I wanted to clear up.
So there it is. The other side of the coin as it were. I hope this clears up some of the reasons why I produce the magazine the way I do. I take criticism of my "labor of love" to heart and I've made many changes to the issues over the years as "suggestions" have come in, but I'm afraid with my current staff of 1 (that's me), producing two versions of every issue is not something I can tackle right now.
Thanks again Sunil and please feel free to write me any time to discuss suggestions you might have for the magazine.
All the best for the New Year,
Mike Potter
Publisher
ESC! Magazine
Happy New Year! May 2006 be a banner year for ESC!
Let me clarify first, that most of my comments were directed more towards the "Cut Here" magazine. The format of that magazine leaves little opportunity for printing even if one wanted to print it. ESC! at least can be printed, which is great (although if one wants to print it, then it might be cheaper to subscribe!)
While I agree that reformating creates more work for you, you really ought to reassess why it is that you are offering your magazine to people off the web. If you are simply trying to get it into as many hands as possible, then you might be accomplishing the goal, but if want to get people to read the quality content, and then get them to subscribe to your print edition, then I wonder if you are meeting your goals.
I'll give you my example...I downloaded the magazine and quickly glanced through it once, read a couple of essays and thats it. Reading it on the computer was not easy, and I haven't gone back. Had it been easier, may be I might have gone back and read some more. But thats just me. Others may be different.
For you, I would think, its very important to find out if this is indeed helping in achieving your goal of increasing subscriptions. If it isn't, the effort to re-design the magazine, or perhaps adopt a different strategy might be worth exploring.
Redesign might at least include a "PSA" goading people to subscribe to the print edition.
On the other hand, a different strategy might be, releasing only a few articles on the web, and asking people to plunk down some money (may be only a couple bucks) to read the rest in the reformatted electronic edition, or more money (your current subscription) to read the print edition. The "couple bucks" might defray some of the cost of reformatting, and might even get people to reading more of the issue (we know people treat free stuff as throw away, but if they spend even a few dollars for it, the value of it goes up many fold).
Why don't you open this issue up for a discussion on your weblog? You may also want to bring this up on a marketing professionals website called www.MarketingProfs.com. Other marketers might be able to help you through this.
In any case, I am now curious to see the print edition, so you will see a subscription from me soon. Good luck to you in your efforts :-)