The second lecture was about "Digital Vs Print" and was very interesting in terms of thinking about the future of books, magazines and newspapers. Will they still exist in 20 years time? Will people still bother with them, or will everyone have virtual books or Ipads for their reading needs. It also raised the question: "Are we screen addicts?" and I guess the answer is yes, Our lives can be dictated to us by the times of various television programmes, people are addicted to facebook and twitter and children as young as 10 years old can spend up to 7 hours on the internet a day!
The Digital vs Print topic is something we ended up talking about for 2 hours, so it would be something very interesting to write about in terms of the essay.
I have also been considering my actual format for the project and while I would enjoy making a poster, I think I would have a lot of competition in that format, and large scale isn't something I have done a lot of. I have been filling up sketchbooks with doodles, drawings of characters/objects and collages for the past 5 years and am actually considering making a Sketchbook as my format, maybe it's a crazy idea, maybe I would need to combine the use of Adobe Indesign and messy drawings and sketches in the sketchbook, and maybe it would end up more like a book, I don't know.
The next four weeks of easter holiday will provide me the time I need to think about what I want to do. I do know that the British Museum, Tate Britain and the V&A all have some exhibits about sketchbooks (more of a fine art topic than a graphic design one, but it could be something that combines my interest in the two). I am also going to look into Da Vinci's sketches for his scientific research, as they are considered brilliant in the fields of science AND art. Hopefully get some research done by next week!
As much as I enjoy reading hundreds of pages a day via the internet, and as powerful of a force digital reading is becoming, I find it difficult to believe that digital systems will surpass the print medium. There are several factors in my belief and I argue the reason that we will always have a print medium is due to several factors. Bare in mind I'm just thinking about books as a subject, I do however believe that the newspaper culture is slowly dieing.
ReplyDelete1) Ownership: You cannot own an ebook in the same way that you can own a book. This is a problem for academics who need a constant reference collection who I assume would be paranoid about data loss, something that can occur so easliy on a computer. (Especially a MAC!).
2) Tradition: Reading a book for me is almost like a ritual occurance, theres almost a sort of spiritual feeling for me when I am reading a quality piece of fiction or a theoretical piece of non fiction that digital letters cannot capture. A lot of people like the satisfaction of being able to physically turn a page. People have been reading books for thousands of years, its something that is imprinted into the minds of many people.
Sadly the younger generations (I'll be honest, myself included) make me believe that reading has become a lost art, barely anyone under the age of 20 reads anymore. Take a look on the train even, you'll probably only see about a dozen or so passengers reading in your average daily journey. But I believe the tradition is reimprinted into young people as they enter university, and for those who miss out on university, in their later adult years.
3) Cost factors: Its apparent that ebooks are a lot cheaper than actual books (those bastards at waterstones aren't exactly helping themselves) but that slight convienience cannot make up for the fact that actual ebook devices are so bloody expensive! You'll have to get a lot of books to get back what you paid and even then you are just fueling the capitalist fire even more!
4) Ebooks have tiny covers: People love to see front cover designs and a lot of people are guilty by judgeing a book by its cover. How can you admire the wonderful cover art of a book when it is resized to a 3 centimeter JPEG image!?
5) Ebooks are xenophobic!: lately I've been getting into Japanese fiction, I've looked and they don't really do ebooks in the Japanese language!
Also I know I'm definatly a screen addict. I just wrote this on a 32" screen!