The World’s First E-Ink Cover On Esquire’s Special Edition Magazine [Video]

This, I think is the first time I’ve actually seen a commercial product making use of E-Ink (electronic ink) technology. 99,999 issues of the special edition Esquire magazine comes with a special cover containing cool E-Ink blinking text!

Esquire E-Ink magazine

Check out the video of the magazine infused with E-Ink technology:

Potential of using E-Ink technology for marketing and content creation in magazines

From the video above, it shows just how technology has come so far as to bring billboard-like displays to a static medium in the form of a book. In no time we’ll get to see animated text and images popping out of the pages of magazines! This would definitely make somewhat boring magazine articles more fun to read.

The good and bad

This form of display technology in my opinion is kind of like a double edged sword. Imagine a page that looks just like webpage on the internet, with a flashing banner advertisement. Although it spices up the page with animation, it also adds a considerable amount of ad-blindness over time.

Therefore, I think readers should still have to have the option of turning them off, like a flick of a switch or by simply removing the battery.

Does that bring up the cost of the publication?

It does bring up the cost of producing the publication, but I hope the cost of magazine will not go to us, consumers. The advertisers should be the ones to pay more to insert their blinking stuff in magazines.

Finally, is E-Ink cool or not?

Yes it’s cool! I can’t wait to get my hands on such cool stuff.

Heads up from Engadget.