Why do paper magazines sink and blogs flourish?
Above: Magazines that haven’t an online language
Above: Magazines with perfect design|contents|socialmedia/layout
Above: Magazines that have a very personal layout and are functional under every aspect.
Although I write on different blogs (coolhunting is my passion), I need to be sincere I’m not a regular reader of the other blogs, I follow only those I think are the best. Of course I don’t dislike them, and I especially like those that span across different fields of interest and not only show outfit after outfit. I prefer who gives a personal and sincere opinion on what they talk about. One of the favorite blogs of our Design Catwalk team is clearly Style Bubble: how not to love Susy. I love her because she has never forgotten her origin, her starting point; she’s consistent; she talks about big brands with deep knowledge and thorough research. She’s really able to give advice to her readers. Notcot is really cool too (I think I’ve been following it for 10 years), different of course, Notcot just chooses what readers upload, but it’s the most popular site of what there’s around in terms of creativity. In the latest days, I’ve done some research about online magazines for a new website ‘lay-out I’m working on’ (I’m myself a designer after all). I browsed several magazines’ sites and with my surprise I saw some of them that still have an outdated style, a low social media interaction and with no internet attitude at all. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why it’s becoming more important the spontaneous growth of personal sites rather than the well established and sponsored ones which often use an obsolete internet jargon. The web is now different. Who’s not familiar with the internet uses often a language that’s only translated from paper to multimedia. Of course I love some magazines such as Another mag, Hint, Dazed Digital. These are in my point of view, the best example of how to lay out contents in a different form. But a lot of other magazines still don’t do it, they’ve only changed their media style without thinking of a new way of communication or of creating interaction with their readers. We know that the biggest trend is now watching how common people dress, people from the street (Japanese street hunting set the rules); readers are becoming voyeurs who want to see simple approaches to fashion, something they can afford in terms of style; they like being inspired by regular people like them. Sometimes I’m really bored of all the fashionistas (old term I know) dressed like models seen on magazines, where nothing is left to chance or to personal interpretation; outfits are often created for what the magazine needs to push. But the investments go where there are more readers and at the moment the bloggers are not so business driven to fully exploit the great treasure they are collecting, millions of readers per year, gold for companies. What’s happening now is that most of them such as Fashion Toast | Garance Dore | Bryan Boy have created a different approach to editing and they have more visitors than the once popular fashion sites. It’s certainly not a trend, it’s a new way of expression that I should not underestimate and It’s clearly a different approach to fashion that outlines the increasing changes that journalism is lately experiencing in any field. Susy Bubble writes for Dazed Digital now. We can easily compare the contents of some blogs with real and notorious fashion magazines. They are passionate and they talk straight to people, something that in some influential and powerful establishments has almost (with some exceptions) disappeared. I think some magazines need to restyle their total look, indeed!
Morethanlove
