Walking into a newsagents in the USA last September, consumers may have been surprised to see the front cover of Esquire magazine lighting up with the message ‘The 21st century begins now’. True to the forward-looking theme of the issue, the magazine was the first to include an electronic paper display, or ‘e paper’, a display technology that gives the viewer the experience of reading from paper while the content changes.
Production of this world-first cover began in summer 2007. Esquire and its parent company Hearst contracted E Ink, a supplier of electronic paper display technologies, to use its Ink In Motion electronic flashing display within the magazine, featuring flashing words and images.
David Granger, editor in chief for the US edition of Esquire, explains: “This cover is both a breakthrough for magazines and an expression of the theme of our anniversary issue. We’ve spent 16 months making this happen as one of the ways we’re demonstrating that the 21st century begins this fall.”
Esquire had researched the use of e paper within the magazine for many years, but making the circuit boards, power requirements and cost small enough for a magazine was not feasible until now, the company says.
This may be the first magazine to implement an electronic display within the printed cover, but Sean Briggs, group publishing systems manager at The National Magazine Company, itself part of Hearst Corp, is not so sure it is the future of magazines.
He says: “It was a special edition of the magazine so Esquire wanted to make it eye catching. It was a nice experiment, but I am not sure animated covers would bring any additional value, as there are other ways to make a cover stand out, using colour for example.
“We may see e paper used in this way for specialised magazines where readers are prepared to pay more for the cover, but for the majority of consumers the increased cover price it requires is just too expensive. There are also environmental issues, in terms of the travel involved in producing the magazine, and recycling the magazine itself. However, it’s an interesting example of how e paper is changing the industry.”
Instead Briggs notes that the use of e paper within portable reading devices (‘e books’) which enable users to download and store content, such as the Sony Reader or Amazon’s Kindle, is already making waves within the publishing industry.
He says: “This year will be a telling year as the success of Amazon’s Kindle product has opened eyes. I think the take up of e books will start in the USA this year and by 2010 it will occur here.
“At the moment, e book displays are mainly black and white making it more suitable for books and newspapers. It will have a major impact for newspapers as the e book is a good compromise, it’s immediate like the web, and it is suitable for travelling like a printed newspaper.
“The readership would have to be subscription based, so if newspapers and books get this right then take up will increase as e books become more affordable. With the subscription model, the e books may eventually be given away like mobile contracts.
“With consumer magazines it’s all about colour and quality, which the devices cannot provide yet, and probably will not be able to for a couple of years. However, my team and I have spent the past 18 months researching NatMags’ ability to provide magazines available for download onto e books.”
E paper is not only affecting the publishing industry, there are many other areas within print that are being shaken up by the technology. For instance, paper manufacturer UPM is currently in the pilot stage of providing e paper options to its customers requiring store labels and banners.
Its Ella Store Labels product range “combines the optical properties of paper and the benefits of electronic price displays, making it easier for retailers to keep up to date”, the company claims. UPM’s ventures manager, Jukka Enarvi, explains: “Around five years ago we started looking at new technologies for flexible displays. After studying the technology we found retail labels to be the most suitable area for application.
“With a low power consumption and high quality optical properties, e paper removed retailers’ previous concerns when using displays in store. It also allows retailers to change prices with less effort, as they no longer need to do time-consuming manual changes, but can adapt prices on the tags straight away through Ella’s integration with a retailer’s IT system. It is still in the pilot stage but the retailers we have spoken to are pleased to see such a good looking solution that matches their needs.”
While paper and publishing companies are testing the water with e paper, outdoor advertising company CBS Outdoor experimented with the technology years ago. Spike Hallissey, head of production for CBS Outdoor, says: “CBS Outdoor is responsible for around 95% of advertising on buses in the UK, so we tried using e paper for bus advertising many years ago, when the technology first came out.
“We experienced problems with the units blowing because of exposure to water when it rains. It was also very expensive using e paper as the panels required for bus advertising are so large. With e paper’s need for a transmitter, we cannot currently use it for Underground advertising either, because the new lightboxes we recently placed in the Underground are streamlined and could not accommodate the size of e paper.”
Despite these setbacks, Hallissey feels e paper will have a bright future within outdoor advertising. He explains: “I think e paper is a wonderful thing and we are keen to explore it again soon. With advertising, people are attracted by movement, so lighting up and changing different sections of an advert is eye catching. I don’t believe there have been any e paper posters implemented yet, but I think it would be a great opportunity to have e paper at a premier outdoor advertising site.”
While there may be optimism in outdoor advertising for the future, Duncan Stokes, group creative service director for advertising agency Ogilvy, does not think that the same can be said for e paper’s use in direct marketing.
He explains: “We are aware of e paper, but we are not actively using it or selling it to our clients. For single use -which defeats the object anyway – the technology is too expensive and not that environmentally friendly at this stage, for instance recharging content to the page is time consuming and unwieldy, if even at all possible. However, we are keeping a close eye on developments and will react when appropriate.”
As Stokes says, e paper currently has higher costs to contend with compared to standard print, along with environmental concerns. However, according to e paper manufacturer E Ink, these concerns are not well-founded.
Though his comments may be unpopular for those in the print trade, Sriram Peruvemba, VP of marketing for E Ink claims that e paper actually has a lower long term cost and is a greener alternative than standard paper. He says: “In terms of cost/environmental concerns, the true cost of paper based traditional media is a lot higher than what is popularly assumed.
“Roughly 550lbs of pulp based paper is delivered per subscriber per newspaper each year in the USA. After use, the paper goes into the trash within 24 hours traditionally and a lot of it is not recycled. Less than 5% of books are made from recycled paper. The situation is not going to get better as literacy levels rise in developing countries.
“Electronic paper is seen as a better alternative to traditional paper. Today we chop down trees and replenish by planting saplings and in some cases have to wait 20 years to re-grow them into mature trees that can absorb carbon from the atmosphere. An alternative would be to save 20 trees in the next 20 minutes by switching to electronic paper.”
Later this year flexible matrix displays will be implemented by E Ink customers, Peruvemba says, and colour E Ink displays will be available in the future. So with hundreds of thousands of books, newspapers and magazines available for download to e book devices, e paper suppliers working to iron out any limitations with their current devices and a variety of industries exploring the potential of e paper, the big question for some is: Will e paper eventually replace paper?
Peruvemba’s prediction is that a co-existence of paper and e paper, instead of replacement, will occur. He says: “We believe that e paper will complement traditional paper for printed documents, books, newspapers and text books in the near term. In the long term, electronic paper could replace some segments of the market currently occupied by traditional paper. Please remember that paper has been around for thousands of years and continues to serve a variety of needs. We do however see a path where electronic paper will make major inroads in various markets.”
Paper manufacturers should, in theory, have the most cause for concern, but UPM is not worried, as Enarvi explains: “Paper will still exist in the future as new technology makes it possible to use electronic displays in ways they could not be used before. So instead of replacing paper, the displays will occur in new places and products.”
Sean Briggs of NatMags is also positive about the impact e paper will have. He says: “E paper and e books are another way for our readers to access us, and it will target different readers, so it will widen our readership instead of killing it off. Just like podcasting did not kill off the radio, e paper will not kill off the printed product. If anything it should benefit us.”
Esquire magazine
The October 2008 75th anniversary issue of US Esquire magazine featured an e paper display within the front cover, flashing the message “The 21st century begins now”. Inside the front cover, the double page advertisement for Ford Flex also utilises e paper to give the impression of the car in motion at night.
To create this, Esquire used E Ink’s Ink In Motion flashing electronic display technology, with its power coming from coin-sized batteries so the application would flash for at least 90 days. E Ink worked with manufacturing partner Nicobar Group in Shanghai to produce circuitry thin and flexible enough to be placed on the cover.
Once the display screen, electronics and batteries were assembled, they were flown to Dallas, where they were taken by refrigerated truck (in order to preserve battery life) to Mexico. The covers were then assembled by hand and the completed covers shipped to RR Donnelley’s Kentucky site. Using a rig specially created for this issue, RR Donnelly bound the covers to the rest of the magazine, which was then shipped to newsstands. According to Esquire, the magazine can still be recycled as the display can be placed within household plastic recycling.
The cover was in development for over a year and required a supply chain stretching over 7,000 miles. Esquire produced 100,000 copies of the magazine featuring the display, with a cover price of $5.99 instead of the usual $3.99.
E Paper and electronic ink
An Electronic Paper Display (e paper) is described by manufacturer E Ink as a display possessing a paper-like high contrast appearance, ultra low power consumption and a thin light form. It gives the viewer the experience of reading from paper, and content shown on the display can be changed to give the appearance of movement or flashing words/images, or to enable users to read a variety of documents, such as newspapers and books, on one display.
E paper is enabled by electronic ink, which carries a charge enabling it to be updated through electronics. Electronic ink requires no front or back light, and is viewable under a wide range of lighting conditions, including direct sunlight. It requires no power to maintain an image.
The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules. Each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles rise to the top and become visible to the user, while an opposite charge makes the black particles rise to the top. The ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver.
According to E Ink, as the microcapsules are suspended in a liquid carrier medium they can be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and paper.
