Sign of the times?

Upon completing a purchase at Target a couple days ago, I found myself with the receipt pictured below.

This got me thinking:

1. As newspaper readership continues to drop, Target is certainly closely examining their bang-for-the-buck from traditional weekly newspaper circulars.

2. Perhaps the week after Easter is a slow week for retailers, or perhaps Easter Sunday has particularly low readership for newspapers. At any rate, I assume economics were behind this decision. Target still had to pay designers, production artists, photographers, retouchers, stylists and support staff to product the circular for April 12. The only savings will come directly from the print production costs.

3. I'm sure there will be teams of analysts at Target HQ here in Minneapolis trying to quantify the cost savings vs. impact on sales the week of April 12.

4. If you are a designer with knowledge and skills solely in the print world, now is the time to start learning some of the concepts and skills behind designing for the world of Web, motion, and interactive.

By the way, the Target Weekly Ad site uses the ubiquitous "page curl" effect. When you use the new feature for exporting a file from InDesign CS4 to Flash SWF format, you have the option of automatically generating a similar page curl effect.