Digitization, social networks, new settings and conditions have dramatically changed the world of magazines and editorial design in the last few years. The speed of this transformation has also influenced designs and concepts. In her work, Canadian designer and author Michèle Champagne benefits from the individual dynamics of the Open Source. Important projects made by Champagne include magazines like »That New Design Smell«, whose dialogue relies on crowd-sourcing, »New City Myths«, and »Garbage without Borders«, plus the social network of Mediamatic Travel, which is based on an Open Source platform.

However, Open Source for Michèle Champagne is more than a quick way of doing design. She prefers to dedicate her time and energy to the different levels of code, philosophy and new thinking, which characterize the Open Source approach. Champagne is keen on the dialogue and discourse with the very groups and people who take part in the production process, while being the target of the product and its design. Readers and users as co-authors – thanks to numerous channels of communication via the internet, including Twitter, blogs and chats – participate in the editorial design of magazines in real time today, an experience that goes far beyond the traditional modes of designing.

Elements of the crowd are part of the stories and their development. The online »copy culture« goes print, and the printed editions reflect the lively design of the web. Users and the powerful emotionality of their e-mails modify the design of magazines as we have known it so far: e-mails, comments, and crowd-sourced opinions transform the traditional (editorial) structures of columns and text blocks, and literally set reading styles in motion. These dynamics are most welcome, since in the so far rather slow environment the reader was used to, they trigger an interest in the political dimensions of design, the transformation of societies, and their openness and views. Speed, individuality, and the diversity of the internet, as expressed by website publishing and printed editions, today, are an exciting new form of design, which overcomes closed circles and opens up to the crowd, i.e. the users, who are invited to become actively involved.

Michèle Champagne online: http://michelechampagne.com