What iPads Can Do For Print

games.. with content

Pretty much everyone says iPads will prove the salvation of newspapers and magazines.

Well, maybe.

When the web first came along, newspapers saw the web as a place to distribute their newspapers, but online. What they did was simply smack their newspapers, pretty much as they looked on paper online instead. Text and mostly black and white.

But the way newspapers ‘looked’ for more than 200 years was entirely a function of the technology that gave birth to them – printing press, paper and ink.

When better presses came along, the visual quality of newspapers and later magazines improved.  LIFE Magazine was as much driven by Henry Luce’s desire to publish photos as by the concurrent invention of ‘hot’ presses which allowed for the publication of glossy and high end photographs.

And now we have the iPad.

But as newspapers and magazines move their content to the iPad, they are more than likely going to simply slap their printing press based architecture online, which would be both predictable and a mistake.

Here, for example, is a look at Wired’s online app for the iPad.

Interesting and among the better ones, but still largely a magazine on a screen.

Now look at what Alexx Henry does with VIV Magazine above.

Henry is one of the most creative and aggressive new digital photographers in the world.

I am not saying that his is ‘the answer’, but it’s an interesting approach.

It marries the technology and graphics of games, which were born online, with content.

Interesting, and a good place to start.