I really can’t imagine the nightmares of online publishing! Shoot, just managing images in a simple blog post can be difficult enough sometimes, I can’t quite fathom just how much work designers put into making it so that we can all view their e-zines. There may come a day when online publishing reaches some level of stability, but it’ll probably always need to be a little fluid to take into account the variables you mentioned. (Sad how easy it is to take the web for granted sometimes. We just click a link and *poof!* a page appears. We have no idea about the hundreds of hours that someone might have put in to make that page.)

It really is sad to see printed publications dwindling they way they are today. It makes sense that they would given how easily accessible the internet is, but still. Even just from a designer’s perspective it’s a tragedy. Print media is nice and static, it allows for a carefully crafted and purely visual design. You can craft it knowing that it will always look the way you intended it to no matter what because once it’s printed, it’s going to stay that way. Unlike say web design, where you have to take into account literally EVERY screen size and browser (current and ancient). Very frustrating to say the least.

…Maybe there’s a way for print media to be reborn on the web too…