With so many ways to have a reading nowadays – you can still go to library to find a gem on the shelf, or you can hit search on your iPhone or open PDF files on your HTC – can we believe any prediction about what will survive in the next many years? Would printed books be historical items – something to display in museum – or will printing companies still be busy and tree cutting still an issue?
Craig Mod, someone who spent 6 years focusing in printed book has a say, an interesting one to me. He believes that content is a king,
…the act of printing something in and of itself has been placed on too high a pedestal. The true value of an object lies in what it says, not its mere existence. And in the case of a book, that value is intrinsically connected with content.
And he well divides books into two groups based on the type of content;
Formless Content can be reflowed into different formats and not lose any intrinsic meaning. It’s content divorced from layout. Most novels and works of non-fiction are Formless.
Content with form — Definite Content — is almost totally the opposite of Formless Content. Most texts composed with images, charts, graphs or poetry fall under this umbrella. It may be reflowable, but depending on how it’s reflowed, inherent meaning and quality of the text may shift.
In the context of the book as an object, the key difference between Formless and Definite Content is the interaction between the content and the page. Formless Content doesn’t see the page or its boundaries. Whereas Definite Content is not only aware of the page, but embraces it. It edits, shifts and resizes itself to fit the page. In a sense, Definite Content approaches the page as a canvas — something with dimensions and limitations — and leverages these attributes to both elevate the object and the content to a more complete whole.
At this point, you might have the same thought as I did – Excellent, it’s clearly obvious now that only Definite Content needs to be printed, it needs pages as its canvas. We can save trees by moving all the novels to digital media. Good point?
Craig’s verdict:
The formula used to be simple:
stop printing Formless Content; only print well-considered Definite Content.
The iPad changes this.
It brings the excellent text readability of the iPhone/Kindle to a larger canvas. It combines the intimacy and comfort of reading on those devices with a canvas both large enough and versatile enough to allow for well considered layouts.
So that’s it? The printing is dying?
Not quite.
He added more on iPad:
While the iPad may be similar in physical scope to those books, duplicating layouts would be a disservice to the new canvas and modes of interaction introduced by the iPad. Take something as fundamental as pages, for example. The metaphor of flipping pages already feels boring and forced on the iPhone. I suspect it will feel even more so on the iPad.
And not just a matter of converting what’s used to be 2-pages canvas to digital form, we have to acknowledged what a device like iPad can offer:
The canvas of the iPad must be considered in a way that acknowledge the physical boundaries of the device, while also embracing the effective limitlessness of space just beyond those edges.
We’re going to see new forms of storytelling emerge from this canvas. This is an opportunity to redefine modes of conversation between reader and content. And that’s one hell of an opportunity if making content is your thing.
Yup, it hits me there. Instead of looking at how digital form can take over the printed form, let’s see beyond that – the opportunities that technology brings with its new characters. Shall we take from here?
What do you think can be the greatest opportunity, in the new way to communicate? Or you’d rather have another thought? Go on and sound below, I’d love to hear from you – the reader – as well.
