Hot on the heels of Rosa B. (mentioned last week) comes Issue Magazine, another new web-based publication looking at the changing world of publishing and design. Issue #0, edited by Alexandre Leray and Stéphanie Vilayphiou, is undergoing a slow rollout this week, culminating in a live chat with Arie Altena, Jouke Kleerebezem, and Harrisson on Friday. Currently they’re featuring an essay and an interview with David Reinfurt of Dexter Sinister and Dot Dot Dot on the idea of open-source design and publishing; an interview with Kleerebezem and a piece by Roger Chartier will be up before the end of the week.
What’s particularly interesting about the format of Issue – and one area in which it differs from Rosa B. – is the way that commenting has been integrated into the articles: after units of the text, there’s the opportunity for the reader to add comments. It’s a bit like CommentPress in conception, but the prompts to comment in Issue appear less frequently than every paragraph. This makes sense: paragraph-level commenting is invaluable for close-reading, but less necessary for the general discussion of an essay. Because it’s early, there don’t seem to be any comments yet, but it’s a promising model of how the readers can be more immediately integrated into a publication.
if:book
A Project of the Institute for the Future of the Book
Dan,
Thanks so much for this post and the previous one. Looking at Roas B and Issue it seems that web-based publishing is really beginning to develop a native vocabulary of design. I wonder if there is some way we could help to initiate an online discussion about this.
bob
Hello,
thank you very much for the post and comments. We had actually planned to link to the Institute of the Future of the Book, in the Further Reading post.
about the commenting system
We are ashamed that we didn’t know about CommentPress before reading your post… This is exactly what we intended to do, but focused on our own design, that’s why we could add a comment, not to every paragraph, but to a semantic unit. But to make a theme, a template, you don’t have the choice but to automate the process.
We first wanted a more precise annotation tool, like highlighting words and then adding a comment to it, then this one is visible on rollover the highlighted word.
about publishing/discussing online
It was indeed a strong will that we had to publish online, because in the field of print magazines, there are no further discussion of the articles. Thought it’s crucial, especially now, where we have the possibility to turn the passive consumer into a participant.
Next week, we planned, with Alexandre Leray, to put a post on our design choices, and then open it up to critiques and discussion. We already have a strong critique of our course director, Florian Cramer, to begin with. We would be glad that you participate to the discussion.