Hyperlinks in Print I
The January/February 2004 issue of International Design Magazine (I.D. Mag) sports a complete redesign. On its last page, a new section called /flashback makes use of footnotes in an interesting way: numbered transparent yellow tapes are added to the text in lieu of the traditional footnote numbers.Those usually nearly invisible numbers become the most visible and active graphical elements of the page layout. To me they evoke more hyperlinks than post-its perhaps because that, rather than linking to bottom-of-the-document discreet footnotes, they are mere links to other blocks of information spread on the periphery of that main block.
I tend to see that kind of gimmicks as direct descendants of web design and the rest of the magazine's makover details seem to reinforce this probability.
If you have seen some kind of web-like layout in other publications, please let us know by sending us an email using the link at the top left of this site. Thank you.
2 Comments added
It seems though that the "new feature" effectively takes all the attention away from the content. It has been shown that yellow and red are the two colors you use if you wish garner the eyes attention so I would definitely have to question the color selection of the new feature. However, it is an excellent implementation of an online elemetn.
Well, I agree on the theory. However, I think that the application was controlled. There are only 6 of them, so nothing too distracting here and they appear quite playful. The playfulness is, to me, good enough an invitation to make me want to read the entire content of the page. Actually, all in all, the amount of text of the notes probably surpasses that of the main block and footnotes they are not; just an interesting way to make us interact and navigate through big scary blocks of text. I want to see more of that.