Another look at the future of magazines

After Sports Illustrated presented shared their ideas for a tablet-ready magazine, Swedish publisher Bonnier is now showing their take on the magazine of the future. The publisher has prepared this presentation in collaboration with UK design agency Berg . The experience is a bit more linear and traditional compared to the Sports Illustrated and Conde Nast experitments. The creators at Berg do not believe in the current options for online reading that companies like Issuu offer.

Of course, all of these new offers are dependent on a tablet device that facilitates the functionality these companies would like to see. So far there are no such tablets, although the highly anticipated Apple tablet is reported to be due in 2010. I thought the presentation was interesting but perhaps a bit overdone and overexplained. Nevertheless it provides another glimpse at what’s ahead for magazines in the near future. This is what Bonnier says about the presentation:

“The purpose of publishing this concept video is first and foremost to spark a discussion around the digital reading experience in general, and digital reading platforms in particular. Thus, we would be more than happy to hear what you have to say regarding the concept and ideas expressed in the video: the magazine reading experience, digital browsing, text versus images, as well as hear about your own digital reading experiences and thoughts. We are all ears.”

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Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.