Cover story: E Ink writes a new chapter
Esquire magazine's current cover has New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady lounging in a charcoal suit, but the publication's October front will trade Boston's brawn for Cambridge's brains.
E Ink, based in Cambridge, has partnered with the magazine for the first mass-produced print product featuring electronic ink - a revolutionary technology that could lead to new options for a struggling print journalism industry.
Electronic ink uses a computer chip to generate electrical charges that attract or oppose tiny black and white capsules. The charges are assembled to make "inked" characters, letters, and pictures that resemble precise Etch A Sketch creations.
Although Esquire is keeping the October's cover top secret until next week, the display will include a rectangular electronic ink inset that reads "Welcome to the 21st century." It's powered by a voltage strip with a lifespan of at least six months.
Esquire considered printing a page in electronic ink more than seven years ago, but the technology wasn't ready. Since then, electronic ink has become more practical and the magazine - whose parent company, Hearst Corp., is an E Ink investor - decided it fit with the forward-looking theme of next month's 75th anniversary issue.
Only 100,000 copies of Esquire's 700,000 full circulation will feature the electronic ink technology, and they will cost $2 more than the regular newsstand price of $3.99 - even though the technology will cost Esquire $8 to $10 per copy. The special-edition copies will be sold nationwide at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores.
The issue's blend of traditional and electronic paper made the construction more difficult, said Sriram Peruvemba, vice president of marketing at E Ink. But the combination was a vital step toward "building a bridge between today's paper and tomorrow's," he said.
Esquire's editor in chief, David Granger, called the cutting-edge cover "a very literal expression of the issue's theme" that the 21st century starts now and said it's not a prediction for the struggling print journalism industry.
"I don't think all magazines are eventually going to be printed with electronic ink," Granger said. "But I do think it's making it possible to distribute Esquire or any kind of information on really cool pieces of paper. We can co-op the excitement of digital and use it for our own devices."
The magazine has covered some of the expense of those devices - that is, the technology to generate the moving ink - by selling e-ink ad space to Ford Motor Co. on the cover's flip side. It shows Ford's new model, the Ford Flex, with scrolling electric ink meant to simulate motion.
The technology's sensitivity required seven bindery tests "just to convince ourselves that this device will survive," he said.
The flexible material bends like laminated paper.
The issue has a global background: designed in Cambridge, edited in New York, manufactured in China, assembled by hand in Mexico, and bound in Kentucky.
The moving black and white capsules contain the same material that gives ink and paper their color.
"We're using bits of ink and paper to replace ink and paper," Peruvemba said.
But media futurist Gerd Leonhard doesn't expect to be doing his reading with George Jetson gadgets any time soon.
"Technology-wise, it's just not there, for mass production or for the user," said Leonhard, a lecturer who maintains the Media Futurist blog. "The mainstream consumer, right now, expects print to be a throwaway product, and changes like that take a long time."
Granger wants the October issue to be anything but a throwaway.
Esquire's most famous covers include those featuring Andy Warhol drowning in a can of tomato soup and Muhammad Ali posing as Christian martyr St. Sebastian, but Granger sees the October front as something different.
"Those were conceptual covers that were in the tradition of magazine covers," he said. "This is a departure from that."
Erich Schwartzel can be reached at eschwartzel@globe.com. 