Esquire magazine are celebrating their 75th anniversary with a unique e-ink cover panel, literally merging print and digital content delivery in one package - Details & videos at Esquire online

The product itself is pretty simple, a standard e-ink display delivering a flashing black & white message. It’s probably more innovative as a marketing tool than as a genuinely useful addition to the magazine, but hey, they’re the 1st to have done this and you’ve got to start somewhere.

Interestingly, in the true spirit of the Internet, hackers have got their hands on it already (see Make blog post) I love that this hacker ethos can creep into such a traditional medium, not in any negative sense, but in the fact that as soon as there’s an opportunity to play with or modify the medium, there are users out there who’ll do it, which is exactly what allowed the web to develop at such a rapid speed.

For a full e-ink magazine experience, publications such as Time, Newsweek & Forbes are now delivered on Amazons ‘Kindle’ e-ink reader. However, the technology doesn’t yet serve the needs of full-colour glossies. One day though…

Update 15/10/08: This just in - How to make an e-paper clock out of Esquire magazine

Here’s the latest Harper’s Bazaar cover, featuring Liv Tyler in an Amy Winehouse homage. Which has gotten me to thinking that Amy’s greatest legacy may not be her music, but to have lent her name to an eye make up style. No matter that Siouxsie Sioux did it first, I have it on good authority that when older schoolgirls bundle through the gates at the end of the day, the first thing they do is reach for the khol and ‘put their Amy’s on’. Which instantly suggests an interest in all sorts of exotic lifestyle choices. Much like Sylwia from our very own IPC Blue Sky cafe, who has been seen to sport them on occasion.

Good cover though. Aside from it’s sheer visual brio, I suspect that our enduring interest in all things Amy will give this issue a big fat sale.

‘God Bless America” proclaims the strap line Woman’s World, one of America’s biggest mainstream weeklies. This cover is not some 70’s museum piece, it is their current cover, give or take a week. And what a cover it is. Every single coverline has an exclamation mark! - 24 in all. Which has to be some kind of record on both sides of the Atlantic. As with my earlier post on US Glamour, there’s more to this cover than meets the eye, to discover why, (more…)

Before the day is out and because anyone who has any interest in web technology has already blogged on it, Google Chrome is out and about. But I would just like to draw your attention to the supporting documentation. Read about the technology. It has been drawn by Scott McCloud. He authored Understanding comics and Reinventing Comics, which provide a great insight into comic history and aesthetics. If you read his books, the possibilities of their being parallels with conducting a narrative through panels and pages in a comic books and creating user journeys through webpages and web applications seem very exciting. Ofcourse any discussion of sequential art, comics, demands the acknowledgement of Will Eisners giant influence. But on a personal note as a web designer who has never grown out of comics, I am overjoyed to see Scott McCloud get this job, and what a great job he has done.

The staff at women’s fashion magazine Elle are doing a talk at the Barbican on Sept 11, details here.

Jann Wenner, owner and publisher of Rolling Stone, has just fired his ad manager (they’re called publishers in the states) He’s obviously decided that the poor guy is solely responsible for the downturn in the American economy that has seen Rolling Stone shed 20% of its ad revenue this year. That said, with the move to a new, smaller format reported here several days ago, Jann may well know more than we think. As usual. (Thanks to Dave Langan for the link)http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130586

The latest television advert for Orangina is causing quite a stir. As to be expected the ASA have received a lot of complaints about this rather provocative London Zoo meets Spearmint Rhino creative. I guess they’re going for that old adage of sex sells. But is it doing it for you?

Ever had the problem of finding that perfect ‘hand written font’? Trying to find one that is both legible and elegant ain’t easy - we have this problem everytime we develop a mag here at NPD. However, recently whilst developing Woman’s Weekly we discovered this little gem - Johnny Script - it’s got that wonderful handwritten look AND it’s legible. We stuck a slight stroke on it to fatten it up and skewed it a few degrees to hurry it up a bit. Check it out now on the pages of WW.

So, after 40 odd years The Rolling Stone is reducing to a ‘rack-friendly’ size. Read the full story here