Making People Easier to Use
In Formation needs to talk. They’re back in print—with a vengeance.
I regret to inform you that In Formation was right when they said, “Every day, computers are making people easier to use.”
After a 25-year coffee break, they’re back in print—and sharper than ever. Launched during the dot-com delirium of the late ‘90s, this cult publication returns not to gloat (okay, maybe just a little), but to stare directly into the cold, blinking LED eye of our current tech moment—and blink louder.
This crew isn’t here to help you optimize your LinkedIn profile or unlock the secrets of a billionaire’s anti-aging regimen. This is the anti-hustle, anti-hype, pro-human magazine made by people inside the machine—including more than a few experienced technologists who built some of the digital tools we're now trying to survive. They’re not Luddites. They’re just … very well-informed. And contrarian. And kind of funny about it.
In Formation’s editor-in-chief is David Temkin, a Silicon Valley techie who’s been an engineer at Apple, a privacy lead at Google, and a founder of three startups. Nearly all of the OG editorial team is back, too. New to the party this century is Josh Klenert, In Formation’s creative director, who spent 14 years in the world of magazine design, before he made the leap into tech—UX, design, and strategy—as one does.
Printed on gloriously heavy, solvent-scented CMYK pages (take that, RGB!), this issue is a love letter to kerning, grids, and the kind of weird, wonderful design that made you fall for magazines in the first place. With over 30 contributors—designers, writers, doom prophets, and the occasional microdosed Silicon Valley philosopher—In Formation weighs in at 1.3 pounds of analysis, satire, soul-searching, and sheer printed delight.
The future of tech may be synthetic and optimized. But this magazine? It’s messy, emotional, and joyfully human. An 18-page comic, a photo essay, and—to complete the analog media experience—a flexi-disc that you can tear out and play on your record player. It’s got two songs from The Layoffs, written and performed exclusively for In Formation.
So before AI reduces your attention span to microseconds, I suggest flipping through In Formation—the only tech mag that smells like ink, weighs like a small chihuahua, and reads like your inner monologue after too much screen time. Read it while you still have the capability.
Learn more at informationmagazine.com.