John Baldessari, working with the LA-based e-newsletter ForYourArt, created an app called In Still Life for the iPhone that allows you to rearrange the composition of the 1667 painting Banquet Still Life. The exercise is based on a similar interactive piece Baldessari made for a 2001 show at LACMA and makes you realize how many objects are squirreled away in old masters paintings (10-points if you can find the mouse in my version above). The app is accessible online at http://in-still-life.com

   

Walker's column debuted in 2004 and focused on the cultural context in which specific trends, objects and behavior exist in (mainly) the US. Unlike some design analysis, objects were never lauded for aesthetics alone; instead Walker studied the way things evolved or interacted once out in the world, for better and worse. I was working on my MFA thesis on design and politics when I started reading Consumed and the column ended up in my bibliography. For me, it exemplified well-researched, insightful and accessible writing on topics I felt were relevant to my studies, and I have continued to faithfully read it through the years (it's turned up in this blog, too).

Over the past month, certain columnists have bid low key adieus (one of which will be the focus of Part Two of this post) amid announcements of new (to the magazine, not the Times) voices coming in, like Mark Bittman, so it makes sense that the editor, Hugo Lindgren, would hitch a redesign to the content makeover (admittedly, I would probably do the same thing). In his editor's letter introducing the changes, Lindgren writes about the "how, what and why" of the new design and he loftily sums up the latter as an attempt to answer the "puzzling question, in this moment of technological upheaval, of how to intensify the experience of reading a print magazine." 

I admire the Times for continuing to print its magazine and for valuing design aesthetics and the goals of the magazine staff enough to back a redesign, but I don't know if this is really the best venue to make a case for an intensification of the print reading experience. First off, the magazine isn't a stand-alone entity; it comes wrapped in two inches of newsprint and I doubt that the Times is going to sway new (youthful) readers to buy a $6 paper just for the experience of reading its magazine in print, when those readers can have access to the whole kit and caboodle for free online. (Yes, the NYT's online business model is soon to change, but I don't believe attaching a price will make readers revert to print if they are digitally inclined. They will probably just shell out the dough or go elsewhere.) 

Secondly, the physical specs of the magazine don't jibe with the high-flying redesign goal. It's hard to convince a reader that the design is improving the print experience when the paper stock is so thin that you can see through what was meant to be a visually soothing expanse of white spice accompanying editorial content to the ad on the other side. Or when knocked out text has a slight fuzz to it because the paper can't hold ink very well. Or—the hallmark of paper reading— when the ink rubs off on your fingers leaving smudges in the magazine and on your face.

This isn't all to say design isn't important or can't improve readability or Lindgren and his team are fools for trying something new, but to me this redesign (unlike the last one which directly responded to the cost-cutting page size reduction) is at best a lateral shift—not an improvement—and at worst, futile. As my husband said yesterday when he glanced at the magazine, "What's the point, newspapers are already dead."