I loved this clever headline in Sunday’s The New York Times— “Too Beautiful for Pixels”—about the biannual art book The Last Magazine. Formatted like a newspaper, its tag line is: All things new—at last. Magnus Berger and Tenzin Wild, co-founders of the magazine, said that colleagues advised them to publish it online. The co-founders decided against the advice, however, and opted for a print-only publication because ”with print you can make something really beautiful.”
I respect their decision, trusting that they know what is best for their content, audience and budget, but I disagree with the implication that you can’t create something “really beautiful” with a digital publication. The decision to choose a print, digital or a combination for distribution of your content should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Readers interact with digital publications differently than print publications, and so those behaviors must be weighed when determining what is right for your audience. Print publications can certainly be beautiful, but don’t discriminate against digital ones—they can be beautiful too.