Lifestyle

Print facing up to digital reality

November 10, 2009 Edition 1

ANDREW VANACORE

NEW YORK: Hold Esquire's December issue in front of a webcam and an image of the magazine pops up on-screen, letters flying off the cover. Shift and tilt the magazine and the animation on the screen moves accordingly.

Robert Downey jr emerges out of the on-screen page in 3D, offering half-improvised shtick on Esquire's latest high-tech experiment for keeping print magazines relevant amid the digital onslaught.

Esquire's top editors are clearly enthused about the new technology - augmented reality.

"I felt like a caveman seeing fire for the first time," said David Curcurito, the magazine's art director.

Triggering the animation is a box just below Downey's cover image, resembling a crossword puzzle. There are about six boxes inside, each calling up a separate interactive feature and a couple of adverts.

At a fraught time for the magazine industry, one could draw a lot of conclusions from Esquire's attempts at innovation: it may be the future of print or just a dying medium's last desperate grab at attention as the internet swallows more of people's time.

With the web drawing advertising dollars and readers from print, publishers have made various attempts to give more oomph to the medium. Time Inc has tested personalised magazines that allow readers to mix and match sections from eight different titles. Entertainment Weekly ran a video screen in some copies of its fall TV preview issue. Last year, Esquire animated the front of its 75th anniversary edition with digital e-ink, the same stuff used in Amazon's Kindle e-book reader.

Though Esquire is being forced to rein in expenses like most publications, the augmented reality issue is one sign the magazine's parent company, Hearst Corporation, isn't taking as big an axe to its properties' budgets. The privately held company publishes 14 other magazines, including Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan.

While declining to give a dollar figure, Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger acknowledges the issue is costing more than usual to put together. Car maker Lexus is absorbing some of the expense by buying space for two augmented reality adverts in the issue. Granger said the magazine would not be able to use the technology every month, but would like to as often as possible.

Economics aside, the technology is about keeping things fresh, and it's clear Granger and Curcurito enjoy ginning up new ways to get the magazine noticed.

"For us, it's just fun. We've tried all kinds of things - and yeah, some of them have been stunts - to try to get people interested in the magazine," said Granger before grabbing the December issue to show off the next trick.

On the page is Esquire's regular men's fashion spread, while on the screen the model is pelted by a computer-animated snowstorm. Rotate the page and the weather turns sunny and the model starts throwing on summer clothes.

The magazine's regular Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman gets a new twist from actress Gillian Jacobs in a grey nighty. She'll tell a second, "dirtier" joke should readers return after midnight.

But clearly not all is fun and humour in the magazine business.

The number of advertising pages Esquire sold in the first half of the year fell to roughly 319, down 26 percent from 431 the year before, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Although Granger believes print still has some surprises to offer.

Explaining why Esquire has decided to pursue things such as e-ink and augmented reality, he said: "I got so sick of people talking about old media versus new media. I wanted to prove that print is still kind of cool. I think of it as kind of our job to show people the strength of our medium."

He may be doing something right. Unlike many printed publications, Esquire has managed to hold on to its readership even as the internet grows. Its online audience is relatively modest - 362 000 unique visitors in September, according to comScore - with some of its lengthier features kept off the web.

But its average print circulation grew this decade by about 38 000 copies to 718 000 in the second half of this year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Subscriptions and news-stand sales have climbed.

But that still leaves Esquire and the rest of the business in a waiting game to see if advertisers return as the recession eases.

With all the dazzle in the December issue shown off, Granger said: "I just hope it starts coming back soon. It's got to, right?" - Sapa-AP