There is no doubt that the internet era has been exciting. I have designed, produced and maintained dozens of websites, some that are truly fantastic. The technology, reach and ongoing, living/breathing aspect to websites is very interesting and rewarding. However, from an interactive and design perspective, I preferred making CDROMs in the mid 90’s with Macromedia Director. The biggest difference was that they took over the entire screen like a video game and you had complete control of the design – no browser rendering liabilities. We could use vibrant sound and video with no lag-time, plugins or downsampling. They were beautiful.

I am not sure if web designers will ever have that kind of artistic control again. But maybe tablet magazine designers will . . .

The scuttlebutt is that the Conde Nast, Apple, Bonnier, HP and others are working on a new standard for the display and delivery of interactive magazines. Immersive and animated, these new publications could spell relief for the industry. My money is on Apple to extend iTunes LP/Extras (the tools/environment for album liner notes and dvd-esque menus for videos) to the magazines. Then sell the magazines in iTunes to be viewed on Computers, iPhones and upcoming table (iSlate?). I think all of this runs on Webkit (the rendering engine in Safari, Chrome and other browsers).

So, the magazines never really succeeded in evolving into websites and were crushed by online upstarts. And now they may evolve into digital versions of themselves sold over the web and authored for display in a browser-based technology? What is the difference?

Stubborn Editors and Art Directors.

Web-people have been firecrackers – loose standards, no timelines, typos fixed after the audience catches them and low costs and far reach. Print Editors and Art Directors are control freaks, not because printing does not allow for errors to be fixed, but because they are control freaks; they have integrity, they adore creating something and sealing it shut, something complete and extraordinary. Magazine publishers and creators want to work on one issue at a time, release them one issue at a time and be judged one issue at a time. And soon they can in the new world.

I want in. I see the browser becoming a place where you find web tools and somewhere else (iTunes?) for Media. That is how it is for TV, Movies, Art, Books, Photography, Music and almost every other media – websites do not cut it. I design a great deal of brochure-ware and always feel handicapped – if 2010 means full screen, deep multimedia, single rendering engine and stereo sound are the new aspects of interactive design, color me adrenalized.