Wednesday, October 3, 2012

RE: The Future of Publication Design

I wouldn't be surprised to see printed books take the same path as vinyl records. People willingly departed vinyl for 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and mp3s but sometime between the peak of the CD and the peak of the mp3 (if one can firmly state it has peaked) vinyl made a strong comeback. In fact, vinyl sales have kept increasing since the new millennium. One small factory that strictly made vinyl albums reopened a couple of years ago because demand grew so much.

E-readers provide obvious perks to reading that a book could never beat but as we become more adjusted to e-reading life, we'll eventually crave more visual idiosyncrasies (size, texture, signs of aging). That craving will help books come back the way vinyl has. It'll be a niche market, but not one just for stubborn old people who never adapted. 

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