The Al Jaffee / Mad Magazine Fold-In Effect in CSS(thomaspark.co)
thomaspark.co
The Al Jaffee / Mad Magazine Fold-In Effect in CSS
https://thomaspark.co/2020/06/the-mad-magazine-fold-in-effect-in-css/
18 comments
how the fold in came to be an every issue feature is kinda a fun story:
From his 95th birthday article (gothamist). It has a nice video too:
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/hanging-with-al-jaf...
"One morning I woke up and I spread out all the magazines I was subscribing to which included Playboy, and National Geographic and a couple of others. When I opened them up, the things that popped out was the first one, Playboy, was the fold-out; and then National Geographic had something that showed the new stadium being built by some athletic team. Then there was another one with a fold-out. Of course, the way we work is something triggers a thought, and what triggered in me was if all of them are doing expensive, full color fold-outs, why doesn't MAD Magazine do a cheap fold-in? MAD was black and white at that time.
I thought about it for a moment, and then I looked in the newspaper and there was a story about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and Eddie Fischer and accusations that Elizabeth Taylor was going from one guy to another. I thought, "Well, that might make a fold-in. I did something very simple, which was to put Elizabeth Taylor on the left side, and Richard Burton was somewhere in the middle, but on the right side, there was just some young guy. The question was something like, "Who's going to be Elizabeth Taylor's next?" We thought it would be Richard Burton, but if you folded it in, it was just that guy on the right side, and it says, "some guy in the crowd." That was the gag. I took it into the editor, Al Feldstein. I said, "Al, I've got an idea that strikes me funny, but you're going to reject it because if you printed it, it would mutilate a page in the magazine." He looks at it. He says, "I like this." He immediately jumped up and ran into Bill Gaines, and then came back to me and said, "Bill said, 'Lets do it. If the kid folds the page, and he feels he's ruined the magazine, he'll buy another magazine for his collection.'" Ever the money man.
I did it, and that was it. It was a one shot gag. A couple of weeks later, Feldstein rushes up to me—I happened to be up at MAD at that time—and said, "Where's the next fold-in?" I said, "Al, there is no next fold-in. That's it. It was a one time gag." He says, "I want another fold-in." "
From his 95th birthday article (gothamist). It has a nice video too:
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/hanging-with-al-jaf...
"One morning I woke up and I spread out all the magazines I was subscribing to which included Playboy, and National Geographic and a couple of others. When I opened them up, the things that popped out was the first one, Playboy, was the fold-out; and then National Geographic had something that showed the new stadium being built by some athletic team. Then there was another one with a fold-out. Of course, the way we work is something triggers a thought, and what triggered in me was if all of them are doing expensive, full color fold-outs, why doesn't MAD Magazine do a cheap fold-in? MAD was black and white at that time.
I thought about it for a moment, and then I looked in the newspaper and there was a story about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and Eddie Fischer and accusations that Elizabeth Taylor was going from one guy to another. I thought, "Well, that might make a fold-in. I did something very simple, which was to put Elizabeth Taylor on the left side, and Richard Burton was somewhere in the middle, but on the right side, there was just some young guy. The question was something like, "Who's going to be Elizabeth Taylor's next?" We thought it would be Richard Burton, but if you folded it in, it was just that guy on the right side, and it says, "some guy in the crowd." That was the gag. I took it into the editor, Al Feldstein. I said, "Al, I've got an idea that strikes me funny, but you're going to reject it because if you printed it, it would mutilate a page in the magazine." He looks at it. He says, "I like this." He immediately jumped up and ran into Bill Gaines, and then came back to me and said, "Bill said, 'Lets do it. If the kid folds the page, and he feels he's ruined the magazine, he'll buy another magazine for his collection.'" Ever the money man.
I did it, and that was it. It was a one shot gag. A couple of weeks later, Feldstein rushes up to me—I happened to be up at MAD at that time—and said, "Where's the next fold-in?" I said, "Al, there is no next fold-in. That's it. It was a one time gag." He says, "I want another fold-in." "
This is such a great example of how CSS is often overlooked. Very impressive. I learned a lot from reading it.
I bet if you had asked how to do this on StackOverflow without any prompting about language, you would have seen a LOT of javascript Me included.
EDIT: I literally just went to a project I'm working on and removed a piece of JS code that animated a feature because of what I learned from this example.
I bet if you had asked how to do this on StackOverflow without any prompting about language, you would have seen a LOT of javascript Me included.
EDIT: I literally just went to a project I'm working on and removed a piece of JS code that animated a feature because of what I learned from this example.
It's incredible how much you can achieve with using web platform features directly and using the minimal amount of JS possible. Pseudo elements, draggable="true", CSS animations... the list goes on and on.
Of course, the real trouble starts when you need to support older browsers and you realize you need to polyfill or change your strategy.
Of course, the real trouble starts when you need to support older browsers and you realize you need to polyfill or change your strategy.
What is the advantage of doing something in CSS vs JS?
All of the peer answers are excellent, here are my $0.02:
As a design principle, it makes sense to use/re-use the capabilities of a component, rather than an agent acting on that primitive. For example, HTML already has a built-in CSS engine that can animate. Re-writing the animation in JavaScript is redundant and adds more code, which means more bugs, more size, more maintenance, etc.
Consider this example in C: using printf("%f", val) versus writing your own convert_float_to_characters_to_stdout(val) function.
There are cases where you may want to do the latter because printf is a very large function for embedded controllers and sometimes excludes format specifiers to save space, especially %f. But normally you just use what you are given rather than re-inventing the wheel.
As a design principle, it makes sense to use/re-use the capabilities of a component, rather than an agent acting on that primitive. For example, HTML already has a built-in CSS engine that can animate. Re-writing the animation in JavaScript is redundant and adds more code, which means more bugs, more size, more maintenance, etc.
Consider this example in C: using printf("%f", val) versus writing your own convert_float_to_characters_to_stdout(val) function.
There are cases where you may want to do the latter because printf is a very large function for embedded controllers and sometimes excludes format specifiers to save space, especially %f. But normally you just use what you are given rather than re-inventing the wheel.
If it is done in JS it is going to be done on the CPU. Probably on the main thread even which could make it choppy.
If it is done with CSS it is much more likely it'll be done by the GPU and will not interrupt the main thread and cause 'jank'.
If it is done with CSS it is much more likely it'll be done by the GPU and will not interrupt the main thread and cause 'jank'.
For one thing, it can continue to work when JS is not working for whatever reasons.
It's an application of the Rule of Least Power.
I would expect it to be faster (use less computing resources) as its handled directly by the browser and not via an JavaScript interpreter.
Cool effect but totally broken on Safari. :(
The halves don't line up, and then when it's done the right half flashes back to a random portion of the image, and then when you move away to "unfold" it's missing a chunk in the middle.
The halves don't line up, and then when it's done the right half flashes back to a random portion of the image, and then when you move away to "unfold" it's missing a chunk in the middle.
Cool effect but totally broken on Safari
Works fine in my Safari: 13.1 (15609.1.20.111.8) on Catalina (10.15.4).
Works fine in my Safari: 13.1 (15609.1.20.111.8) on Catalina (10.15.4).
Broken for me too.
Safari 13.1, MacOS 10.14.6
Safari 13.1, MacOS 10.14.6
Broken for me on Chrome, after the animation a portion of the lower right quadrant re-appears, flipped.
Every time I see something like this I'm reminded of how little CSS I actually master.
It's OK!
No matter what possible specialty you pick, there is probably someone better at it than you.
But only you have the exact mix that makes you... you.
Just focus on what brings you joy, and appreciate the skills you do have today. I'm sure you could figure CSS out if you decided it was your main goal.
No matter what possible specialty you pick, there is probably someone better at it than you.
But only you have the exact mix that makes you... you.
Just focus on what brings you joy, and appreciate the skills you do have today. I'm sure you could figure CSS out if you decided it was your main goal.
There are certainly people a lot better than me when it comes to CSS. Some of the dynamic aspects of CSS (i.e. anything that contains a "duration" for instance) seems somewhat unnatural to have in the CSS, but that might be taste.
I once worked for a company large enough to have its own designer who created the designs in Photoshop. Then we had another guy who created HTML templates + CSS from it; then all I had to think about was the back end code, those were the days. Now I'm a one man band struggling with some of the instruments :-)
I once worked for a company large enough to have its own designer who created the designs in Photoshop. Then we had another guy who created HTML templates + CSS from it; then all I had to think about was the back end code, those were the days. Now I'm a one man band struggling with some of the instruments :-)
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These were great growing up. The March Madness one made me laugh. It's good to know that these things still give that effect. Will almost certainly be lost to future generations.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442041 about Jaffee.
Awesome (on MacOS Chrome)! Really neat what you can do with CSS. And thanks for the shoutout for Al Jaffee!
BTW: Does anyone know if there's an archive of the german mad magazine ? The translation is an experience in itself, and while I found a commercial CD with all the mad archives in English, nothing for German.
BTW: Does anyone know if there's an archive of the german mad magazine ? The translation is an experience in itself, and while I found a commercial CD with all the mad archives in English, nothing for German.
I built the renderer and thus page turner mechanism for Wrap [1], which kind of reminded me of this. It was interesting to build it and I learned a lot about performance optimizing CSS. Apologies if it sucks now as I haven't been involved on the project in many years.
[1] https://www.wrap.co/
[1] https://www.wrap.co/
EDIT: I misunderstood how this works!
Really cool! Might be good to make the "closed" the default and the mouseover open it?
Really cool! Might be good to make the "closed" the default and the mouseover open it?
No. The whole idea of the fold-in was to be the opposite of a fold-out (playboy). In MAD, the folded out asks a question or poses a riddle. Folding-in provides the answer and laughter.
That would be like telling the punchline first, then the joke.
The folded-in view is the surprise.
The folded-in view is the surprise.
Except in this image, isn't the folded out view much more interesting, ie more of a surprise? I thought the idea was to have a juvenile joke, but the hammock coming out from tri-fold and the cake appearing from the cauliflower-haired old man appears to be the surprising part.
Anyway, the text is a little off for me - the letters clash NO, AM, FO, IN (almost the whole I is gone) - but it appears to be the underlying thing is just an image, so is the image off. A ½px margin sort of fixes it.
Overall impression is very slick.
Anyway, the text is a little off for me - the letters clash NO, AM, FO, IN (almost the whole I is gone) - but it appears to be the underlying thing is just an image, so is the image off. A ½px margin sort of fixes it.
Overall impression is very slick.
The way it works in the paper magazine is that the image is printed on a single page, and you receive it unfolded like any other page. (That's why there are instructions on the top right about how to fold it. If it came pre-folded, you wouldn't need those instructions.)
So the format of the joke as used in the magazine is that you see the unfolded version first.
Anyway, in the one you're talking about, if you read the top-center text, it talks about what the artist gets to do for his birthday. As he blows out the candles on the cake, he wishes he could spend his birthday on the beach. The joke is that he actually celebrates it by trying to think of something to draw, i.e. he has to work.
So the format of the joke as used in the magazine is that you see the unfolded version first.
Anyway, in the one you're talking about, if you read the top-center text, it talks about what the artist gets to do for his birthday. As he blows out the candles on the cake, he wishes he could spend his birthday on the beach. The joke is that he actually celebrates it by trying to think of something to draw, i.e. he has to work.
These are wonderful! I resubscribed to MAD Magazine a few years ago when my oldest son was able to understand the humor. The fold-ins were his favorite part. What an amazing run for Al Jaffee and MAD magazine--truly a part of history.
Aaaand the two halves don't line up in Safari, ruining the effect.
Figures.
Figures.
We can fix the lining up issue by deleting the spurious <br/> tags in the DOM, but then a new issue emerges where once the animation is complete it snaps back to only showing the left half.
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Oh, is this what they did in that episode of Malcolm in the middle...
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As a kid, this was my favorite part of Mad Magazine.
Same here. I think as a kid I tried to work out what the fold-in would look like without messing up the page itself. :-)
Me too. I grew up in Germany and on one of our trips to the US (late 70s maybe) we discovered Mad Magazine. My dad decided we all needed a subscription - he was always trying to find ways for the kids to brush up on their English. So for many years we had Mad Magazine mailed to us in Germany. We tried not to mess up the page for the other readers in the family.
Cool idea, but
(1) :hover excludes mobile users, maybe pick a more accessible event trigger? and (2) alignment issues
Touch works for me due to :active.
Al Jaffee just retired at 99! Here's article on his retirement, which is also linked to from the original site: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/06/06...