Red or Blue, Get Your Flavorpill To Order

Print magazines which have already long established their reputation as such, National Geographic, GQ, Electronic Gaming Monthly, for example, in creating their online editions quite possibly made their run through several laborious content strategy meetings, style guides and design iterations to a greater degree than more recent, perhaps web 2.0-born, online-only magazines. The former have the added task of presenting their content consistent with their established brand but with all the new responsive and interactive methods of delivering that brand content online, and some have managed this quite well, while the latter have the benefit of launching with all the bells and whistles built right into their brand and delivery.

Flavorpill is one such example wherein we find not only a magazine native to the internet, but also one that offers a broad range of topics in contemporary culture; books, film, design, art and multimedia—and Flavorpill has quite intelligently designed their workflow to utilize web 2.0 communication tools, like social media, to stay up-to-the-minute on these topics, where a print journal would have to balance their print editorial structure with what is published online; one good example is Wired and its web edition. Flavorpill manages this format in several specific cities in the United States, and London.

Of course, digital natives are not (yet) born in and of their own connections online. In other words, their design and implementation still follows conventions we find in "meat space"; namely, letters to the editors and writers, in the form of comments, which are now frequently published in print versions of some magazines, like Wired; readers can subscribe to online-only magazines, typically for free and receive a newsletter-style email, the body for which is a condensed version of the brand style seen on the website, with the most visited and newest content linked; and, of course, use of images. However, these aspects mentioned, while they are analogues of print magazine layout and delivery, have been adjusted to the scaling potential of user-generated, feedback, and responsive, interactive behaviors online. Real-time affects have brought forth, by default, a new dimension of feedback, appropriation and re-delivery—and print magazines have a good deal of pressure to balance the inherent need to stay present, and current, with the time it takes to compile, editorialize, layout, design and print a monthly magazine.

Meanwhile, online publications like Flavorpill are freer to experiment, without the anchor of inverting or struggling to keep alive an established print magazine.