Project- an iPad only magazine from Virgin, just launched with several Living Art examples. Although the most prominent is the motion cover and spread featuring Jeff Bridges, many other articles incorporate motion to further enhance the story. To date, we have not seen any iPad magazine that has incorporated motion as seamlessly and effective as Project. This little gem is available for $3 in the iTunes App store. More visual candy below.





Video:

Pic:

The material shown in the photo contains piezoelectric nanowires which, when flexed can produce enough power to drive an LCD.

When we first produced our Living Art magazine for Outside (vid below), we envisioned a future where magazines and other media were published and distributed on recyclable, flexible OLED devices which would cost about the same as a hardcopy magazine today. Imagine something about size of a sheet of paper, and the thickness of a laminated menu, that you can purchase on your way to work and use as long as you like. Nanogenerators like this may be the technology that powers such a device.

Our belief is that once portable media is freed from the constrains of the proprietary device like a smartphone or tablet, the barriers to access this media become low enough to make the medium near ubiquitous. So naturally we are excited to see little advancements like this emerge. If you’re looking forward to someday curling up with a flexible digital magazine that you can afford to loose on the train, this is definitely technology to keep your eye on.

“Now researchers at Georgia Tech have made the first nanowire-based generators that can harvest sufficient mechanical energy to power small devices, including light-emitting diodes and a liquid-crystal display.” [Technology Review]

Motion Posters (beware the voices):

Pics:

Here is the latest motion poster for Tron Legacy. With subtle motion additions, this poster has been transformed from it’s print counterpart. It’s also equipped with the viral ability to embed on any website, which in our opinion, any motion poster on the web should have.

Print Poster:

Poster courtesy of IMP Awards

For the launch of their new iPad app, Esquire has included a “motion cover” for their first issue. The cover involves a shot of Javier Bardem walking up to the camera and saying “Welcome…” and then simply cutting to the cover. With Esquire’s past in editorial innovation, we can’t help but feel a little cheated with their iPad debut.

Last year, Esquire and photographer Greg Williams experimented with Megan Fox and Rachel Weisz motion covers, but their only outlet was the internet. These covers included basic motion but they were still effectively a magazine cover and at the time, were something new and different. It seems that Esquire took the easy way out on their iPad issue, and simply added a video before bringing the cover in. Esquire has always been known for their love of innovation and embracing new technology, so if baby steps are what it takes, we hope Esquire will continue to push the limits of their app and the digital editorial medium.

Pics:

Multimedia artist Marco Brambilla and Kanye West just released this “living” painting in lieu of  a music video on MTV. Inspired by Roman and Renaissance iconography, Marco and Kanye wanted to create what Brambilla called “an elliptical piece of storytelling” that portrays Kanye as an “authority figure in a moment when everything is about to collapse.”

No stranger to abstract video art, Brambilla is known for his numerous video installations including Civilization- an in-elevator  video installation created for New York’s Standard hotel, which takes passengers on an inferno-like journey from heaven to hell… Intense. And a must see.

Kanye originally approached Brambilla stating that he wanted to create something that wasn’t a music video, to which the artist replied “That’s great, because I don’t make music videos.” Power was shot using twenty-two choreographed layers of video in slow motion using the Phantom camera. Below is Marco’s version, Kanye’s Version, and a behind the scenes.

via Cool Hunting and Vulture

Marco’s Director’s Cut:

Kanye’s Cut:

Behind the Scenes:

Time Warner’s CEO Jeff Bewkes hinted that he wants to allow his tree killing print subscribers to automatically have subscriptions to the corresponding better looking tablet versions. These include tablet magazines such as Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune. There is no plan on when this will exactly happen but Bewkes stated that the “key to it all” is to allow all subscribers to get content “over all broadband devices as soon as possible.” If this happens, there will be added incentive for more users to use the tablet version, which in turn, could lead to a larger subscriber base of the digital magazines and lead to more innovation. Although Time Warner has yet to produce an example of Living Art such as a motion cover, they do plan on it, and we haven’t given up on them yet.

via WSJ

Australian denim collection Denim & Thread is planning to release a motion poster that ties in directly with their print campaign. “The motion poster picks up the story, where the still ends,” a campaign advantage owner Alex Lambousis is very excited about. Although only a few samples and a quick behind the scenes video has been released, it will be very interesting to see how the motion poster develops and enhances their print campaign.

Credits:
Cinematographer: Sidat de Silva
Producer/Photographer: Alex Weltlinger
Production Company: 18 on 9 Media Arts
Client: Denim & Thread

Gear:
Camera (motion): Arriflex D-21
Camera (stills): Hasselblad
Lens: Zeiss Master Prime

Samples:

Screenshots:

Photographer Alexx Henry and his team show you how a magazine might look in the not-so-distant future with the October cover and spread for Outside Magazine. In this video, Alexx Henry takes you through the creation of the Living portrait of the triathlete Chris Lieto photographed using the revolutionary Red One cinema camera and the 5d Mark II.

Music is “Gone Gone Days” by Two Years Before the Mast and “I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool” by El Ten Eleven. Buy El Ten Eleven’s songs here: itunes.com/elteneleven



The Evolution of Print

How dynamic content and developing technologies can revive an industry with an uncertain future.

by Alexx Henry

Picture this

It’s the year 2015 and a commuter is heading to work on the train. After taking a sip of his coffee, he glances down to see a moving picture of his wife blowing kisses to him on the front of the cup. Smiling to himself he turns the cup around to check the coffee level, shown as a horizontal line dancing with the motion of the train. Placing the cup down on the tray, he picks up the local newspaper and glances at the headlines. The paper is alive with moving pictures and type that begs for his attention. He swipes his finger across the top of the paper and when a password box pops up he taps something in. Suddenly the paper transforms itself into a much more pleasing layout reading “Welcome Mr. Smith.” All the articles are custom tailored to him.

For now this reads like a scene from a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster but the truth is we may be just a few short years from realizing this. There are  developing technologies with applications that look like they come right out of the future. We’re talking flexible displays that can bring us Mr. Smith’s “living” newspaper. This will change the way we ingest tangible media. This is exciting stuff. And I’m going to say something pretty unconventional here, given the current condition of the newspaper and magazine industries: this is an exciting time for the print industry, because these technologies might just provide a solution for an industry with an uncertain future. This could be the evolution of print.

I know. The Apple Tablet is coming. The kindle will be improved. Others will follow with their claims to save print and get people reading again. I don’t dispute this. I don’t even dispute that some of these devices will hit new levels of awesomeness, and get people reading digitally in record numbers, but I don’t see these devices as being able to shut down the presses. For one thing, not everyone will be willing to own a device that will cost several hundred dollars, no matter how great. What I do see is this: advances in electronic paper technology that will bring us flexible, portable and recyclable displays- inexpensive to make and distribute, and affordable enough to buy in the morning and leave on the train for the next guy. Now that sounds like print evolution.

The technologies that can get us there

There are two emerging technologies that have the potential of putting content on small, portable and flexible vehicles. OLED (Organic LED) and E Ink. If you’ve ever laid eyes on the Amazon’s Kindle, you’ve seen E Ink technology in action. Using the same technology, Plastic Logic, a company out of England, has plans to release a letter-sized flexible e-reader in early 2010.

OLED is fast emerging as the preferred display for cell phones and soon televisions. OLED is extremely color-rich and can be made light, portable and energy efficient. Flexible futuristic prototypes have been developed by Sony, Samsung and the Universal Display Corporation, who has even developed a flexible wristband that streams video. Most exciting is that as recently as August, scientists from the RIKEN center in Japan announced advances that would allow OLED devices to be manufactured as inexpensively as printing newspapers.

Given these developments, it’s no stretch to imagine how these technologies can be adapted to produce the next generation of “living” newspaper or magazine.

“Living Art” and a warning from DOOH

As a photographer, my interest is in the content creation side of all this, and as a content creator, I’m teeming with excitement, because with new technology comes new opportunities. Dynamic content will need to be conceptualized and developed specifically for this new media if it is to thrive. This is a great time to be in the business of content creation.

But before discussing dedicated “living”content, let’s take a quick look at the Digital Out of Home (Digital OOH) market, which uses existing technology (HD screens etc…) to integrate moving content into people’s daily lives. Digital OOH is just similar enough to “living” print to give us ideas about what might and what might not work. In fact, they’re conceptually twins. Both media rely on grabbing the attention of non-captive audiences. So unlike in television or film, where people have signed up as viewers, with this media, the motion or images need to be engaging rather than noisy. And content using the principles of still photography achieves this.

CBS Alive in the UK has done a good job of making Digital OOH a welcome part of the London commuter’s daily life. Many of their campaigns show still pictures, like the movie poster for Bride Wars, suddenly coming to life. What used to be flat still shots are now springing to life in a way unique from video. And according to research, most commuters are seeing this as a welcome and pleasing distraction. And there’s a lesson for would-be “living art” content creators in this.

London’s digital screens were not always embraced. As a matter of fact, when the screens first came out, the video that was streaming was basically repurposed commercials originally intended for broadcast. They were met with public scorn and some even cited them as harassment.

Mike Hemmings, the Head of Digital Marketing admits that they were intrusive. The lesson was to focus on the idea of attraction vs distraction. He states, ” [Digital OOH] failed to capture the imagination of advertisers, but more interestingly…the consumer.” He explains, “The multitude of blinking ads with an array of colours and sounds were cited as harassment rather than offering inspiration. From this very first incarnation of digital screen, we can learn much.”

So the trick is to create unique and compelling motion content that will attract- not distract, and convey its idea on one level at a glance, while offering more layers should a viewer choose to invest. This is great news for photography and image professionals, because many of the skills and disciplines used to make a powerful still image work are the same skills that will produce the best content for these next generation technologies. So if you understand how to communicate an idea through a single image or spread, you understand how to create compelling content for a future medium like a living magazine.

So let’s evolve

So while it may be another 6-8 years, depending on market demands, until we can hold a living magazine, let’s get people excited for the promise of what may come, before we get stuck repurposing old rules for new mediums- which we already saw did not work for the DOOH market.

Let’s make content that offers a unique experience unlike that of watching TV or surfing the Internet- that will be integrated into the consumer’s daily lives: at the newsstand, on the train, in a cafe. Let’s make content that takes what we love about newspapers and magazines and bring it to a new level, enhancing readers’ experiences. We don’t have to worry about the future of print. We can evolve.