OUGD601 DEVELOPMENT/RESEARCH FROM FEEDBACK

After consideration my question and feedback, I decided to refine my question to something a lot more tailored to the content I was gathering for the essay. After reviewing my presentation and research it was clear to me that my direction was aimed more towards the relationship magazines have with their digital and print platforms. This has lead me to rephrase my question to 'Do print and digital magazine publishing platforms need to coexist to be able to survive?' I feel like this question is a lot more refined then my previous one, 'What is the current state of magazines and will they survive the digital era?'. This new question has given me more flexibility within my current research and will allow me to look deeper into the research I have and new items also.

After changing my question I began studying some solely digital publishing platforms to understand how and why they work. One very interesting one I came across was e-flux. e-flux journal is a monthly art publication featuring essays and contributions by some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today. It publishes all of its content on its incredibly well designed website, which allows you to travel through it with style and ease. This format can easily reach readers all over the world for the simple price of nothing. All their articles are clear and concise, not too lengthy at all which aids to the idea that print publishing is more flexible given the fact a standard print issue mag will focus in on one topic throughout, whereas a site like this will keep its stories brief and to the point. 

In 2009, e-flux introduced a new print on demand service for their readers. This would allow them to access unique stories unknown to the online site and print them off on whatever format, paper stock or technique that they wished. They believed that “the printed page serves as an important commitment to a certain temporal conclusiveness. It may not be how content moves, but it is how content asserts that it exists, even if only temporarily.” (e-flux, 2009, journal as exhibition, e-flux journal, https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/38452/journal-as-exhibition/) This process is only used for certain stories that requite that 'conclusiveness' that they have mentioned. This has allowed them to publish an even wider variety of stories. These more full stories will encourage more readers to invest to this journal.

This decision has also aloud them to overpass the thought of deciding what kind of print magazine they would be. A coffee table mag would obviously have a certain target audience that maybe they aren't aiming for in comparison to say a broadsheet reader. This approach has aloud their audience to create the publication in whatever format suits them, be it coffee table magazine, a scholarly periodical, a broadsheet, a set of posters or unbound pages collected in a box.