Distributed Mind

I want to take a moment to point out a magazine that I think we could all learn much from, one that stands out both visually and in content: National Geographic. I know that National Geographic does a good job of hyping itself, but in my experience it has usually lived up to that hype. Detail-oriented readers should be able to point to specific cases even recently when National Geographic has failed to live up to the standards its readers might want to hold it to, for example the touched-up photograph of the pyramids on the cover of the February 1982 issue or the Archaeoraptor incident. Additionally, I could add that the magazine does sometimes lapse into sensationalism (e.g. the aforementioned "Archaeoraptor"), fluff, voyeurism, and such. But, on the whole, it really can be a joy to read. Its photographs are legendary, but its design is usually just as good, complementing the photos well. Some of its articles do cover content that has appeared elsewhere in more scientific and scholarly magazines and journals, but many of the articles cover stories that really don't belong anywhere else. It seems to live up to the ideal of the magazine of a geographic society: informing while capturing the imaginations of its readers. Certainly reading an article in National Geographic is not as good as being somewhere - or sometimes it is better than being there, but it is a useful supplement to real world experience. And for some places, such as Mars, the articles in this magazine may be as close as any of us ever get. Not that all of the articles are geographic, but those that are not are usually interesting and informative as well.

To really capture the essence of the visual beauty of this magazine, there is no substitute for simply browsing through several issues (as I expect all of you have already done in the past - I recommend doing it again while paying special attention to how articles are layed out, the choice and placement of photographs, the use of color, and the use of typefaces). But there are two articles I want to mention that especially demonstrate the kind of content (as well as design) that really make National Geographic stand out for me among magazines. The first is "Mars on Earth" from the July 1999 issue, about Devon Island, where prototype Mars rovers have been tested. The article was rather stark visually by National Geographic standards, but the photographs and the story - even the idea of the story, about an island that looks enough like Mars to be as a stand-in for it - really caught my attention and my imagination. The second is an even better example: "Return to Mars," a 29 page article (!) in the August 1998 issue. It featured some beautiful images of Mars, two pull-out dioramas, and, without being trite, even had some red-blue-separated three-dimensional images and a pair of red-blue glasses for viewing them. Granted, they had a lot of help from the NASA scientists and engineers, but, still, it was a beautifully produced article. The audacity of including the three-dimensional images helped to cement my impression of this magazine.

I mention this all also in light of a question I was asked in two interviews this year: What web sites' design do I especially like? Rather unforgivably, I still don't have an answer for that question, strictly speaking; which is to say I can't think of any web sites that I have been particularly influenced by. But I do have a magazine I have been especially influenced by, and National Geographic is that magazine. Now, the differences between the two media, I don't expect to reproduce National Geographic on the web, but I do try to keep it in mind and live up to the standards it sets in a different medium. (Ironically, Nationa Geographic's web site is not particularly good, nor is the Society's. Which I suppose just leaves room for the competition.)