Multifaceted Magazine   

Speculating on the form of PrintmakingWorld Online

Printmaking is a multifaceted medium and, in the age of digital communications, an online magazine which is for the printmaking experience must be multifaceted. It must encompass as many of the kinds of printmaking experiences as imaginable—and fantastic.

Multifaceted

PrintmakingWorld Online will encompass as many kinds of printmaking experiences as conceivable, and be open to inconceivable printmaking experiences undreamed-of.

Online

PrintmakingWorld Online will be comparable to a MMORPG as a MOOC—persistent and dynamic as the printmaking experience that it represents.

Magazine

Not only does PrintmakingWorld Online follow the industrial models of online magazines, it also brings the book into the reason for its being as a container of information.

Linear—not

Mequoda’s authors point out that the characteristics of a magazine tradition are that the magazine is linear and finite like books and movies; no one reads every word or watches every minute; or, if they do, they don’t go back to it and read it again. PrintmakingWorld Online, owing to its main game, Proximates (aka PrintPals), is a persistent experience, popping up anew without reader action.

Frequency

Paper-based magazines, like the paper-based print, are limited by natural resources and of time itself. Of both, on planet Earth, there is a dwindling supply for each and every printmaker and every print lover. That’s why the artistic value of printmaking—its performance and its visual, tactile nature—will stay alive only with the persistent presence of PrintmakingWorld Online.

Core value

Cohesiveness is the nature of thematic magazines. Sports Illustrated is about sports; Better Homes and Gardens is about homes, etc. PrintmakingWorld Online is about printmaking, but as a result of its being the growth tip of 300 centuries of evolution from hand prints on cave walls to today’s blockbuster video game, print and performance technologies, it is not only about paper-based printmaking as the ultimate printmaking experience.

The core value of PrintmakingWorld Online is its performance value, its social value, its educational, research, and production values in a context of a world of finite resources in dire need of education for tomorrow’s generations. PrintmakingWorld Online will blend hands-on experience with the digital devices that are the descendants of print ancestry.

Portability

Mobility is key to PrintmakingWorld Online. To quote the author of the Mequoda Group online book, Digital Magazine Publishing Handbook, (on which this essay is structured), “Users can fully experience magazines on the beach or on the toilet.” It is the desire of the producers of PrintmakingWorld Online to be on mobile devices and in data that is packed in every product of the strategic partners who make equipment, tools, materials and supplies for the printmaking world.

Textual

That means reading—a pastime which some say is a declining pastime. As traditional magazines were full of words and long articles, the online magazine invites parallel experiences which co-mingle with reading experiences. The aural and dynamic media (TV, movies, recorded music, etc.) interfere with reading. It’s a mixed-media life today.

Mindful that these interfering media are all the grandchildren of good old printing, we at PrintmakingWorld Online do not fret; instead we learn from what youth—who have been the targets of interference industries—are drawn to. It is generally agreed that people have learned everything they are going to learn by the time they are eighteen. If printmaking is to survive, then the printmaking experience must reach young people where they are—on mobile devices and in games kids are playing.

Collectible

PrintmakingWorld Online seems at first to lack the important element of collectability. Traditional magazines, by their physical nature, can be saved and stored—much like original fine art prints. What about PrintmakingWorld Online? In and of itself, it is not collectible in the same sense; however, inventors, creative people, imagineers, and discovering people who have always been part of the printmaking scene, no matter what their goals, will find ways to achieve collectability.

It might be in winning online games with badges, the difference being that with digital badges you can only brag about them in digital mediums. In the printmaking experience, you can print your badge—maybe with a 3-D printer or by carving it in wood or on a potato.

Thanks to Mequoda Group

I wrote this essay by reading a couple pages in the Mequoda handbook, above.