What to Do if Your Cover Is Not Flashing

Don't worry. It's not you. Most copies of this issue -- like the non-flashing one at left -- don't. But we have also published an experimental limited edition of this issue (which you can see here) that features something called electronic ink, with moving words and flashing images. It is available at some major bookstores and newsstands. And although its content is identical to that of the regular edition, we created the special cover to demonstrate a revolutionary technology that will change the way we all read paper magazines in the years ahead.
Putting this cover together really started seven years ago, when deputy editor Peter Griffin and senior editor Brendan Vaughan (see below) visited E Ink, a start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that had developed an ink-based form of electronic paper displays. Its technology is what is now behind many kinds of cell-phone screens as well as the Sony and Kindle electronic readers. But at the time, the development of "e-paper"--a thin sheet as flexible and readable as conventional paper but with words and images made of electronic ink--seemed far off; the circuit boards, the power requirements--and the cost--just couldn't be made small enough to use in a magazine. Until last year.
Yet the technology still needed a push. First E Ink and its manufacturing partner, the Nicobar Group in Shanghai , had to design circuitry thin and flexible enough to bend with the cover and small enough to draw a level of energy that would allow the battery to last for at least ninety days. (In fact, it should last a few months longer than that.) Then they had to devise a way to conserve battery power during the prolonged process of assembling and transporting and binding the cover. As Andy Mulkerin, managing partner of Nicobar, explains, "The ink draws more power at higher temperatures, so we needed to control the temperature the units were going to see from China to the newsstand." Which meant we needed refrigerated trucks. (Which also means you can easily extend the life of your issue by storing it in the freezer.) Then there was the bindery: Our printer, RR Donnelley, had to radically alter its processes to protect the cover from the shock of its heavy-duty binding machines. None of these and many other challenges had ever been faced before. In all, Esquire's special e-cover has been in serious development for more than a year and required a chain of innovation that stretched more than seven thousand miles. But in the end, as it flashes the delayed arrival of the twenty-first century, we think we've taken an important step into the future of magazine publishing. Or at least that we did something that looks pretty cool.
link: http://www.esquire.com/features/cover-not-flashing-1008