I'm going to look at the appeal/benefits verses environmental impacts of the printed magazine in comparison to that of online versions. I will therefore look in detail at reader/consumer relationships with printed and online magazines and the environmental impact of the printing industry and our role in this as graphic designers.

I have being looking at books such as "experimental eco-design" and "design sustainability" which gave me some ideas about the issue of environmentally conscious design and ethical decisions designers have to make but not about the printing/magazine industry in particular.

I found an article in this month's Grafik mag called "How to Be Green" (p.80) by Nat Hunter of Airside and Three Trees don't make a Forest which was more specifically relevant and mentioned the negative sides of online publications which was really interesting. I would really like to refine my topic and then try and get in touch with the girls at Three Trees because they appear the be a great resource of knowledge on environmental graphic design and the printing industry and are really nice (well Caroline Clark is anyway so i assume they might be too).

To tie it more into the magazine industry I could do case studies of magazines who have printed and online versions and compare their reader statistics and hopefully interview industry professionals.

Daisy