Influx

Esquire are fond of experimenting with technology; the brought e-ink to the magazine last year and their latest escapade involves the technology de jour,
Augmented Reality.

Judging from the YouTube clip, Esquire had some fun incorporating aspects of Augmented Reality throughout its latest issue.

When you think about it in detail, none of the experiences are especially unique and they are interactive in the most simplistic sense. While these experiments with technology are noble, they are not quite there yet. The reality as opposed to the augmented one, is a world full of mobile digital devices where people will be able to interact with short and depending on the device, long-form content. The issue for magazines is how do they play in this world?

Augmented Reality is a nice gimmick that will sell some titles on news-stands, but won’t save the magazine business.

Posted by Ed Cotton