The December issue of Esquire Magazine will feature a new technology: augmented reality, which will allow certain pages of the mag to pop to life. Letters will fly off the page when readers place a webcam over certain portions of the publication.
It looks like the magazine industry is experimenting with anything to attract reader attention. Case in point: Esquire is adding a new technology to the pages of its December issue. Dubbed “augmented reality”, this addition allows readers to display the mag in front of a webcam and watch certain pages leap to life.
For example, cover boy Robert Downey Jr. jumps out of the on-screen page in 3D, doing a little shtick. Also, certain letters swirl and emerge from the pages in this augmented reality experiment.
According to AP, the catalyst for these animations are boxes below certain images, “resembling a crossword puzzle and looking a little out of place.” Esquire is placing around six of these boxes in the issue.
David Curcurito, the magazine’s art director, said: “I felt like a caveman seeing fire for the first time.”
Hearst Communications, the group who publishes Esquire, isn’t the only company to play with AR. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Papa John’s International Inc. has pasted AR tags to thousands of pizza boxes to spark images of a moving car used by the pizza chain’s founder.
Also, July’s cover of Bonnier Corp.’s Popular Science magazine showed wind turbines in augmented reality.
The Esquire issue will come out Nov. 16.
