Paper Into Pixels.

The snowboard magazine industry has taken a battering the last few seasons, with advertisers having less money to spend, dollars are being taken away from print. What we don’t want to forget is that if we don’t support the magazines behind the industry, then the wheels of snowboarding will fall off. Where will your team rider’s photographs get published and where will brands advertise to their consumer? How will resorts tell customers about what is new for this season? How can you plan your next trip, if you don’t read the article about riding in Japan?

The Internet is obviously where the market is moving and has been a big kick in the guts for most magazines. News, stories and photographs that you once would have once waited for months for are now instantaneous. Consumers are now getting so much more online, instantly and with little cost. With all this talk of tablets and Ipads, the next challenge for the snowboard magazine industry is to harness the analogue ideas into the digital world. Whatever happens, nothing online will ever compare to the experience of flipping the fresh pages of a magazine, smelling the ink and feeling the paper stock between your fingers. Magazines will never die, they will just become an art form.

Camber and rocker shook up the design of snowboards this last few seasons, now the challenge for the industry is to see who can translate paper into pixels and ride the storm as more readers move online and print becomes art.