Where magazines and digital meet
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This article was posted on June 10, 2012 under the category Reviews, and covers the following topics: Adobe, App, iPad, Time, Wired.
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So what’s the deal?
Wired magazine is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and as part of the festivities, it has released a digital edition (for iPad) of the very first issue of the magazine, originally released in January, 1993 — as issue 1.1, which turns into 1.1.1 for this digital re-release.
Who made it?
The same fine folks who bring you the regular edition of Wired, teaming up again with Adobe and its suite of digital tools.
Why would I want to get this?
To see how it all started! It’s still amazing to me that this is a magazine that I’ve been following since its inception — and I do remember picking up this issue when it originally came out.
What am I going to find inside?
You of course get the entire first issue, presented as page scans, but the real reason to get this is for the amazing oral history of the inception of the magazine, that acts as an intro — it’s a fascinating look at what it took to make the magazine happen, with all of the people involved sharing those memories. Then, as you go through the magazine itself, each page includes extra annotations that give some interesting background info on various aspects of the design and content.
So how do you read this thing, anyway?
You flip through the scanned pages, and each page gives you the following options (in the form of buttons at the bottom of the screen): view the page as part of its spread, zoom in to read the text, make the annotations appear.
What were they thinking?
The only thing to criticize would be the size — it’s a whopping 1.4GB — but that’s apparently the price we’ll have to pay to take in such a fascinating artifact in HD.
Bottom line, should I buy this?
Absolutely, and did I mention that it’s a free download from within the Wired app? But as I said, I’ve had a lifelong relationship with this magazine — the only magazine, except maybe TIME, that I’ve read on-and-off for such a long period of time — and it was an absolute joy to be able to revisit the issue this way. And I so loved the annotations that it’s something I’d really like to see used in other magazines — to give us some extra background (behind-the-scenes kind of stuff) on the finished pieces and layouts that we’re reading.