I am going to explore the role of print media in the digital age. I will be looking into the pros and cons of the style and how, instead of becoming a dying art form, it can, and will, evolve into a new one. The first thing the reader needs to have is a basic knowledge of print and digital media. For example, printed poster art, flyers and magazines are just some of the popular pieces of print media. Digital media may include websites, online magazines or eBooks and videos. The next thing the reader needs is to know what do I mean by the role of print media? This may consist of combining the two processes together instead of leaving them separate and believing that you can only have one or the other. A QR code in a magazine or newspaper could lead to an interview online which would leave more space in the physical copy to go into other details or stories. I will also be discussing the ideas that print cannot exist in a digital world as it is too clunky or heavy to be carrying around everywhere when you could have one device that carries it all. People believe that still using print or even multiple devices when you could just use one for all is because no one wants to let go and nostalgia gets in the way. Throughout my essay I will be exploring different examples of work within both fields and examples that tie the two together using information from multiple sources online and within physical text which, for the question I'm exploring, I believe to be quite fitting.
Firstly I am going to look at what digital media is and what is meant by the digital age. Digital media can consist in a variety of different forms, the techniques used to create them rely on electronics, software such as the Adobe Creative suite and many others are heavily used in the process but are backed up by being able to post online for free. This is making it more and more accessible for everyone to view many different forms of art or expression wherever you are in the world. News can be sent straight to your mobile, a photograph taken half way across the world can be sent to friends and family instantly. "it quickly became apparent that the interactive media held the potential for bigger and better things" (Davis, M, 2012, pg 209) You can see in this extract that the author talks about technology improving interactive media for the better. She speaks of how some people found the transition between paper and screen hard but then grew to find it easier and gave them chance to do much more.
Everything is becoming quick, easy and instant almost encouraging laziness; attention spans are falling - no longer does art linger, we can now simply 'like' something to show appreciation. Styles come and go quicker than ever before and yes, more people are enticed by the fashions and fads but it feels a bit more like brainwashing, we are almost all becoming zombies worshiping the digital. This is why I believe you cannot just have one or the other people need the physical, they need to engage, there needs to be a hybrid.
"As software developed, it became possible to create and output accurate facsimiles of printed work in a fraction of the time spent in hand-generated processes." (Davis, M, 2012, pg 208) Technology has quickened processes by quite a lot. Meaning that you do not have to spend time waiting for a certain process to be completed and can produce much more work in the time you would usually be waiting. This may be seen as an improvement as you can get much more done in a shorter amount of time but it maybe seen as a sort of short cut and may not be interpreted as art because people may think the effort isn't there, the heart and soul of the piece has been taken away and replaced with a machine rather than using the hands on method.
Print media does not necessarily mean hand rendered methods but it can include them. As I said before people need to engage with the physical not just stare blankly at a screen. The worry has always been there, the fear, that we would all become hypnotised by digital means. Televisions were feared because people would sit and stare for hours at this new technology. Yes, it is an escape from reality but it is not real. If you hold a book you take it in, as you stare at a screen it is hard to pull yourself away. I write this essay sitting at a computer screen having just painstakingly pulled myself away from the television. A break is good every now and then but we need to get a healthy balance of the two. Print is not dead and I do not believe it ever will be. As you walk down the street and see different advertisements around you get distracted and realise, if a new one has appeared, something has changed in your world. Yes, we see this every year on the advert breaks of our favourite shows and more than ever when the new supermarket Christmas adverts are out in England, that is what I am going to discuss in the next paragraph.
A combination, a hybrid of the two if you will, that is what will strive, the book 100 ideas that changed graphic design has brilliant quote at the start; "John Plunket predicted, information would gravitate to electronic media, but that extraordinary content is going to stay in the print domain." (Heller, Steven, and Véronique Vienne. 2012) this is what we need. We should not remain stuck in the old ways without evolving or make advancements but we should also not get idle and let machines do all the work for us. We should be making our lives easier but we are still using the same methods as before just putting them into digital form, a book on a phone where the page turns as if it were a real book, it's known as ‘skeuomorphism’. Sometimes it is helpful to understand a new technology but it almost seems irrelevant. We need technology to print our posters, flyers, books, it makes it easier, quicker but still helps the audience engage with the piece. Send out the message on social media like, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, spread the word but do not use it as the only means. "not a fixed point in time where one medium instantly displaces another." (Davis, M, 2012, pg 212). In this piece of text we see the writer talking about another book and how throughout history technological advances occur regularly but do not instantly replace older mediums, it's an evolutionary process. The writer seems to agree with this in what she is saying, almost including this quote to argue a point and tell naysayers not to throw out the old process and replace it with the new but instead incorporate the both. When I look at my phone I am bombarded with emails, notifications and alerts about events or new offers that I neither want or need so I do not look at them but if I am physically handed something or it is put on a billboard that I find it very difficult to ignore then I have to engage with it, that being said, if the advertisement is not eye catching then I will resist picking it up. I think digital media has the advantage in this area. If I see a book in a shop with a stunning or interesting, different cover then I will pick it up, if it does not have this then I will not be so intrigued by it, however if something pops up online I may do the same and disregard it but there is something about reading online that somehow makes it seem easier. This may be coming from the perspective of a younger person and people may disagree with me but I think it is far easier to get lost in the internet, sometimes through boredom, than it is to get lost in printed material.
"Instead of passing off to specialists the various mechanical tasks necessary to bring art to print, the designer gained complete authority over the technical and formal creation of published work " (Davis, M, 2012, pg 208) At first designers had no freedom with the finished product and could only be sent off to specialists to printed. Nowadays individuals have complete authority and freedom over their finished product if they wish. As I said above, I would much rather have a beautiful hardback or paperback copy of a book rather than have an entire folder dedicated to literature on my hard drive. I am not enticed into reading from a digital folder yet if I see a book on my shelf I may be drawn to picking it up and reading it, this goes for films too. Above me is my DVD and Blu-ray collection I would much rather have the disk and the box than something to click onto on my computer, I feel more organised. This brings me back to the lazy aspect, I have not cleaned up my computer in years, I am a digital hoarder, I do this in the physical world too but it is much harder to find the space.
I have presented some ideas about the different forms, some of the pros and cons of the digital age and print media but I have not exactly spoken about the role of print media. As I have said more than once, I think we need to use both of them together in harmony to find a middle ground. The rate at which technology has advanced over the past decade, let alone century, is astounding yet alongside it we still have printed media, it is not being shunned away or phased out in fact new technology is being developed and people are still choosing the physical. I think rather than developing a digital way of how to turn a page we should instead be looking at ways to help make print more enticing. Ways of getting people more excited about print. The iPad was invented on the basis that people would be reading eBooks, newspapers would be sent through your phone however it quickly became apparent that people were not turning away from print. A statistics each year show that a lot fewer people were switching to digital than originally thought "The rate of e-book growth is slowing substantially, but it is still growing a bit." (Barry Wallop, Telegraph, 2015)
I will show some examples of digital advertising and some of printed next and talk about their differences as well as similarities.
In 1906 Lucian Bernhard helped change the idea of overly complicated design to a simpler more minimalist style within advertising. Object poster (Sachplakat) "It was the jewel in the crown of large stylistic movement called Plakatstil, or Poster Style." (Heller, Steven, and Véronique Vienne. 2012) The reason for this new style of advertising was because of new technology that helped push the industry into the future, it meant that colour image could be reproduced easily. Technology helped print media but it didn't try to reproduce or change the ideas it just gave new ones and opened a fresh new idea to the world
If you take the idea of digital advertising like bait and click then they can be interactive so have higher rates of use but can also be move intrusive so you may resent the company more. Humans need to feel as if they are being spoken to directly to have a connection with the advertisement this can make them feel more comfortable which I don't think a computer can do. As you can see in the image the advertisement is enticing the viewer into wondering how the woman manages to stay so young in looks. Then you are tempted to click the button 'LEARN THE TRUTH NOW'. Obviously we are becoming a lot more savvy about the ideas of online 'fake' adverts but some people will still click whether they are desperate or just bored and interested. The advertisement itself is horribly designed there is nothing that catches the eye apart from the horrid flashing imagery and the bright colour nothing is aesthetically pleasing and not many design decisions have be consulted. Messages like this appear all over the world wide web so people are becoming almost desensitised to the idea or have some form of an advert blocker. This brings me again back to the point of interaction throwing you off or giving a human element to the sale.
As I have been talking throughout this whole piece, I have been discussing print media's role. Almost shunting digital media whilst talking about using a combination of the two rather than discussing the pros of the digital as well but I am now going to go onto this. "Whether or not print dies, its business model will." Jeff Jarvis, Bloomberg, 2008 In the digital world we as a society are taught a lot about saving the planet, we are more aware of the environment. This is a great example of why print is dying, it's harmful to the environment to keep chopping down trees and destroying forests just so we can display some information but this is why the hybrid is needed. We can't keep destroying the earth and not caring about it but we can't all become mindless digital zombies. Everyone needs to pool together and reduce, reuse and recycle, for the business men out there it's also cost effective. The amount of money you could save just by changing the typeface let alone the stock or anything else could cut costs down. "a Pittsburgh schoolboy has calculated that the US state and federal governments could save getting on for $400m (£240m) a year by changing the typeface they use for printed documents." (Jon Henley, The Guardian, 2014).
As I look back over the waffle I have just produced I would like to point out and relate back to some of the key points. Print media still has a role in the digital world, humans need a physical interaction to engage with something whether it be a product or a simple conversation. We cannot all sit around at computer screens becoming distant to our own existence, 'Digital Zombies'. Digital media has it's benefits, you are able to contact millions of people in seconds from a click of a button with no cost at all, this beats handing out leaflets in the street that nobody wants to take. Putting up a billboard may seem meaningless but in this new era we live in attention spans are at an all time low meaning we become less and less likely to click on the same annoying advertisements online but if something big shiny and new appears we will once again become distracted and interested. As I am writing this from a graphic designers point of view I will talk about the benefits for the art world. We are able to share our work and become well known in the art community even more than we would have become in the days where you had to be recognised as a genius to be recognised at all. Sometimes this can mean that fads and fashions come and go a lot quicker than they used to but it can mean that more people become part of this new idea and it becomes such a bigger experience.
The world is constantly changing and evolving but we can't just disregard the old to make way for the new, we have to learn from it, adapt it and use it to help mould the future. This is where print medias role is in our 'digital age' this is where print will come out strong. Print is not dead.
After getting feedback on the essay I have points to improve:
- The structure
- The tone of voice is too friendly and laid back
- Opinion needs to be backed up
- Use of third person
No comments:
Post a Comment