industries

Pushing the Boundaries of Print

A Stockholm-based company is reimagining the traditional print medium – with the world's first wearable magazine. Media is arriving in all forms. And something truly innovative just landed on the publishing industry’s doorstep. A company in Sweden is pushing the boundaries of print with the world’s first wearable magazine. Fashion statement or conversation piece – either way, I love it.

By David Allison /

T-post wearable magazine
If the medium is the message, what does a t-shirt magazine say about 21st century media?

A Stockholm-based company is reimagining the traditional print medium – with the world’s first wearable magazine.

Media is arriving in all forms. And something truly innovative just landed on the publishing industry’s doorstep. A company in Sweden is pushing the boundaries of print with the world’s first wearable magazine. Fashion statement or conversation piece – either way, I love it.

Last year Esquire blew readers away with their augmented reality issue featuring Robert Downey Jr. With a simple software download, features of the magazine sprang to life on readers’ home computers.

In the summer, clothing brand Forever 21 infused a classic advertising medium with some serious technology. Their billboard in Times Square combined high-tech surveillance cameras, computer vision technology, and a token female model to interact with audiences in entirely new ways. A Polaroid is taken of the onlookers and instantly shown by the model to the crowd. An individual is picked up and turned into a frog by a kiss. A live twitter feed with messages from fans scrolls down the screen. You get the picture.

A piece of advice for social media naysayers: “Get over it.”

And I suppose we’re also excited about magazines on iPads.
 
But you cannot wear any of these. This, to me, seems like a major drawback. We all want media we can wear. No one disputes this fact.
 
Stockholm-based T-post is using the iconic and ubiquitous graphic tee as a blank slate – a tabula rasa – to reimagine print media. Rather than employing 21st century technology and gadgets to pioneer its new media-delivery format, the company used its ingenuity to create a sartorially subversive product: the world’s first wearable magazine. It’s high time, I believe.
 
Every five weeks subscribers receive a new t-shirt in the mail with a news story on the inside and a new artist’s interpretation on the front. The team behind T-post defines it as a “communication experiment”:
 
More than just a fashion piece, T-post uses great design as a subversive tool to instigate meaningful thought, conversation and action.
 
Even better, T-post is always working to minimize their effects on the environment. The number of t-shirts printed matches the number of subscribers – no back issues, which makes every tee a limited edition. They use an environmentally certified printer, which uses eco-friendly ink. And fans do all of the advertising – word-of-mouth.
 
What an excellent way of interpreting and sharing stories. How else can we push the boundaries of the print medium? What other radical rethinks are waiting in the wings? Who says print has to be on paper? Who says anything has to be the way it always was? How big of an assumed convention can you shatter?
 
Check out T-post’s YouTube video for inspiration. Then, if you have any great ideas, jot me a note on a pair of pajamas. Email is so last week.