Further refining CP

Trying to refine my central proposition to go beyond just web and print relationships, I want to explore through graphic design how to engage the reader in the experience of the magazine without tying it down to any specific format

Key Points to Summarize
- Engaging format
- New Ideas
- Stylepress as an experimental design space
- Inspire others/Act as manifesto


Original
How can communication design principles be applied to stylepress magazines to exploit the advantages of online content while retaining the tactile experience of a physical magazine?

1. How can the experimental nature of stylepress magazines be used to inspire creativity while exploring new relationships between print and online content?

2. How can stylepress magazines be used as an experimental design space to explore new ideas in relation to how audiences engage with different formats?

3. If Stylepress magazines were used as an experimental space to explore the advantages of digital and physical formats, the resulting outcome could act as a manifesto declaring a specific position or announcing new approaches to the topic.

Articles I've been reading
Mostly posting them for future reference

Art Manifestos and their applications in contemporary design.

Article about how material produced by designers defines them right down to client communication. Interesting in relation to the self-indulgent and inspirational qualities of stylepress. If done properly a stylepress magazine exploring format could become an inspirational manifesto declaring a specific position on format and reader experience.


Unit Editions
A publishing venture involving Adrian Shaugnessy from Mute magazine. Though not defined as a magazine, this venture aligns heavily with stylepress philosophies and in my opinion can be viewed as a type of Stylepress magazine. Interesting in relation to pushing the definition of what a magazine could be, blurring the line between magazine, publishing company and the graphic designer as artist (works created to be sold for their design qualities).

Andy Pickerings Stylepress

Screen shot from creative mornings video.

Idea: Inspiration Zine

Send around a journal and get creative practitioners to add something to one page (e.g illustration, collage) and publish it into a zine of collective inspiration. Aligning with stylepress philosophy but going beyond the inspiration of a single editor/creator while taking on the creation role myself to help understand the creative process of a magazine.

A wild blogpost appears.

To be honest I started reading this blog post by Al Tepper because I thought the name (Gutenberg, Berners-Lee, Aristotle, McLuhan, Chomsky, Rubel & Zappa's Eyebrows all walk into a blog post...) was quite funny. But after reading into it a bit I found his opinions very interesting. His view on the internet as a return to an oral tradition (through social networking etc) and as the fall of the "gatekeepers of information" seems to fit very well with the definition of stylepress and lends me to the idea of perhaps, crowd sourcing the content for a stylepress magazine, so that rather than the editor/creator being the inspirational force, the magazine becomes a representation of the collective inspiration of many similar to websites such as designspiration and ffffound. This also becomes a two way relationship between consumer and creator, something not currently seen in stylepress. This could also be a good way of exploring the relationship between stylepress and the internet, forging new connections between the printed book and online material.

Interview - Renard & Frost

Awesome interviews with David Renard and Vince Frost, expanding on some of the concepts talked about in The Last Magazine. Renard more clearly states the four key differentiating factors of stylepress magazines:

Physicality
Unusual Design
Provocative & Timeless Content
Dedication to particular groups

Renard states that he chose the examples that fill his book mostly from his personal collection, but said they had to meet at least 2 of the aforementioned criteria to qualify. All of these 4 aspects of stylepress are at the whim of the editor/creator as described in previous posts.

"Doing an independent magazine... you really can present your own vision of what you think, not only a magazine should be but what you think your viewpoint on the world should be" - Andy Pickering