Esquire unveiled a special 75th edition today sporting the first use by a magazine of electronic paper technology, but what is presented as the future of digital/print convergence is little more than ink mashed with some underutilized circuitry.
Both the cover and an advertisement in the magazine use the same E Ink technology as the Amazon Kindle, but the similarity pretty much ends there. The cover implementation reveals/conceals text, reverses the foreground and background shades of black, white and gray, and backlights pictures and illustrations drawn on the plastic overlay.
The ad (for a Ford Flex Crossover) on the inside cover has a flashing loop which highlights three sections of the panel. Supposed to indicate motion at night, we suppose, but the result is hardly moving.
The whole cover feels thick, like one of those musical greeting cards your friends really don't want you to give them anymore. The batteries have a life of about 8 to 9 months, but as a static message there is no ability to re-use, let alone a reason to re-read.
Time magazine seems to have accomplished more with less last year, by placing a simple mirror on the cover, when "You" were person of the year.
Still, the 100,000 E Ink copies will almost surely sell out even though buyers have to pay $6 – a whopping 50 percent premium over the regular $4 cover price – to get the "special collector's edition."
Adding insult to injury: Esquire subscribers aren't getting a copy unless they go out and buy one. Those would be the same loyal readers who now pay as little as 50 cents per issue for the magazine which used to establish its cutting edge street cred by publishing such authors Norman Mailer, Raymond Carver and Tom Wolfe.
Is this the magazine business model of the future? Charge an arm and a leg for eye candy and dis your base?
There might be something leading edge about all this, but one might have at least expected the best example of the first use of digital ink in a magazine to, well, say something to get me to want to buy the magazine by just looking at it, like non-digital covers have done for more than 100 years. A flashing table of contents, highlights of this issue or even interspersed ads would have been nice.
But there is just this repeating message: "The 21st Century Begins Now."
Isn't the 21st century supposed to be all about convenience and technology to improve the status quo?
“This time it’s cool. This time it’s a novelty,” said Esquire editor, David Granger, recognizing the shortcomings of the images which were fixed to keep costs down. He says he hopes to implement a second E Ink design early next year, and possibly publish the entire magazine in the format years down the road when the content can be updated remotely.
Wake us when print media gets close to something we saw much closer to the actual beginning of the 21st century in 2002's "Minority Report," when newspaper headlines changed dynamically during the morning commute.
Check out a video of the issue on Gadget Lab.
Photo: Annie Tritt
