For many in the publishing industry, the thought of paper magazines disappearing sends chills down the spine. But according to Campion Primm, creative director of the California-based digital-only women’s magazine, VivMag, publishers who refuse to embrace today’s new technologies are setting themselves up for a very difficult tomorrow.

“This is not a question of do you like your website versus your magazine,” Primm said yesterday during his keynote speech at Paper to Pixels, an event co-hosted by Masthead, Design Edge Canada and Adobe. “The question is: What is the magazine of the future? In my mind, the magazine of the future is probably not going to be associated with paper.”

Primm wowed the room full of graphic designers, art directors, publishers and magazine industry people with interactive quizzes and multimedia samples from the latest issue of Viv. Much of the publication’s success is due to its use of interactive elements, which allow readers to participate in the magazine, Primm said. “To have someone interact with your page is going to give them more than if they just read it.”

 

A digital magazine that people actually pay for? A subscription to Viv costs $36.

Viv is not just a magazine website, nor is it a run-of-the-mill digital edition that essentially replicates a print magazine. Instead, the publication is created and designed specifically for the digital edition medium, with Primm, as creative director, capitalizing on the opportunities provided (animation, video, embedded links) while looking to resolve the problems associated with digital editions (primarily related to navigation). “When you zoom in [on a digital edition], you push off your advertiser,” Primm said. “Your advertiser is not going to pay for that.”

Primm's keynote was followed by a discussion between art directors, where the panelists all seemed to agree that when it comes to designing for the Web the bottom line—as usual—is money. “We can do anything with the Web. Anything is possible,” said Malcolm Brown, art director for the now online-only Unlimited magazine. “It comes down to funding. If you want to put the Web on a high standard, it needs to be financed.”