Designing the Bookshop of the Future
"What makes a good bookshop? Should second-hand be in the mix too? Is a café important? How do you incorporate digital? Foyles’ clarion call at the Bookseller’s FutureBook conference in London last week seeks to answer some of these questions.
The retailer has joined forces with the Bookseller to invite customers and industry experts to help design its new flagship on Charing Cross Road, which it will move into in early 2014. With discoverability of increasing importance, the timing couldn’t be more apposite. Everyone is agreed that bricks and mortar bookshops are under threat, but what elements are needed to make a physical bookstore survive in an increasingly digital world? ...
'Foyles has to create something that gives people an experience,' said former London Book Fair Director Alistair Burtenshaw. 'It has to be a destination store, a shop in which people want to spend a considerable amount of time. It has to be an environment that adds value. When you make it a more personalized experience, you are happy to pay more."
(Roger Tagholm, 12 December 2012)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Internet Cafés: hybrids involving analogue and digital, virtual and real
"Terms like 'Internet café' or 'cybercafé' bring us right back to the 90s along with phrases like 'web page' or 'digital divide', which were invented to describe new hybrids involving analog and digital, virtual and real as well as the present and near future.
It's not that these terms have grown obsolete. It's rather that these 20th-century phenomena they once described have outgrown their terminology. They were born as metaphors, but over time turned into idioms, and their analog parts were the first [to] lose their original meanings. People who did not witness the emergence of the web do not fully understand why browser content is still called a 'page'. It's has also become unclear what public internet access facilities have in common with cafés, yet we continue calling them 'internet cafés' or 'cybercafés'."
(Olia Lialina, 2012-01-10)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
NTU Multimedia student Alex Card wins prestigious Yellow Pencil in D&AD Awards for Alvy character animation
"I got a second place and a yellow pencil! I'm so pleased it's unreal.
The award ceremony was great fun, so much free wine and Pimms! And obviously the chance to meet loads of professionals.
I had an amazing opportunity to speak to the Disney guys that set the brief I did. And it turns out that I'll actually be working with them on a few projects. I really hope to show them the best of what I can do and someday soon be working with them on my own show, or anything really, I'm still in shock."
(Alex Card, 29 June 2011)
[Nottingham Trent University Multimedia BA (Honours) student Alex Card commenting on winning 2nd place in the Animation / Crafts section of the 2011 D&AD Awards.]
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MultimediaSHARE
Christchurch earthquake: 'It's good to be alive'
"Steve Mateer of Lyttelton tells of his frantic skateboard down the hill to get to his boys' school after his truck was nearly crushed by falling rocks when the quake hit."
(NZ Herald, Friday 25 Feb 2011)
[In great Australasian style Steve Mateer demonstrates the art of understatement as he explains how he survived the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
