Glued to our screens

Here we go again. July: Amazon.com has announced that online sales of e-books have nearly doubled those of printed books. Gulp. Think how many trees that just saved... how many printing companies have fallen by the wayside, how many printing ink manufacturers are afflicted by the domino effect, not to mention paper manufacturers.

It's all going online. Magazines and company publications like the annual report. Mind you there are still plenty of baby boomers out there who insist on their printed items to remind them of the good old days, proud of their houses displaying obligatory bookcases with shelves bending under the weight of literary treasures coated in dust and awaiting their ultimate fate in the charity bin or some community book sale. When will they die off? The baby boomers I mean. Another twenty years? Who knows what we will have twenty years to assist us with our reading endeavours? ... virtual screens and surround sound you can conjure from thin air courtesy of that Apple device surgically implanted in the front of your forehead courtesy of your local Apple store.

Back to Amazon.com. They sold 143 e-books for every 100 hard cover books earlier this year but that has now reached 180 e-books! And this does not include books that are available as free downloads. And the e-books readable with their Kindle reader have only been around for a year and a half.

The book printing industry around the globe is understandably concerned.

So are the magazine printers and also the annual report printers who are fighting a losing battle with the new breed of digital printers positioned to pounce on small quantities and on-demand requirements.

The battle for attention in the online space will be won by those companies that invest in technology-savvy designers who can leverage the power of the medium and grab people's attention in a compelling and interactive way that the printed page never can.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney and London with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, Singapore and Mumbai.