After last week’s design critique, we moved on to the second of this module’s deliverables. For this we have a choice of a narrative website or an e-book, we have looked at building websites both last year and when building our portfolios. E-books, however, are a new topic, so this week’s lecture focused on giving us background information on e-books and some of the key points we would need to consider when designing an e-book.
As I had not designed an e-book before and had yet to make my final decision on whether I would build a narrative website or an e-book, so I wanted to explore e-books and their design further to help with this decision.
As I had developed most of my content for the immersive prototype deliverable of this module, I wanted to concentrate on what the most important aspects of e-book design are.
For this, I looked at these two articles:
https://blog.kotobee.com/ebook-design-tips/ (Last Accessed 02/04/24)
https://designcloud.app/blog/designing-an-ebook-tips-and-tricks-for-creating-an-engaging-reading-experience (Last Accessed 02/04/24)
Both articles are written for people who already have created the content for their e-book and who are at the stage of creating their final e-book for public distribution.
One of the first tips was to define a target audience for the e-book as this target audience will define what design works best. For my project, I have always had quite an open target audience, I was more aware of who I was not designing for rather than who I was designing for. I had defined my target audience for my immersive prototype as being not designed for children, but people interested in space, maybe starting at around ten years of age. I was not going to put in an upper age limit as this would not have had as much of an effect on my design. For me, I used this target audience when selecting my imagery, typography and copy for my immersive prototype so I feel it is a good target audience to aim at. I may however as I explore further discover a need to tighten the demographics of my target audience to assist me in making design decisions.
One thing I had not considered, but which both articles mentioned was the need to create an eye-catching cover for my e-book. While this is mainly to stand out in a crowded e-book marketplace, it also serves the purpose of intriguing potential readers and encouraging them to read my e-book. I feel for my e-book, I could use the cover as a visual introduction to my narrative and what my book will be about. A book cover is a piece of graphic design so it will be different from the design of the rest of the book in terms of being more visual than typographic, with its ability to be eye-catching rather than to provide information being its key task. I feel a strong visual cover could enhance my e-book and even though I had not considered it previously I will make it a key part of my e-book design.
Other important aspects of e-book design, I have covered in the design of my immersive prototype such as the colour palette and typography. My typography may need some adjustments in terms of sizing to fit the different medium of an e-book versus an immersive prototype. But, otherwise, I feel these elements will transfer from my immersive prototype to e-book perfectly.
One aspect that I will need to consider that will have a huge effect on the design and readability of my e-book is the layout. There are many layout options I can choose from, but the key is that they match the content that I am including. In my case, my content is based on imagery with the text there to tell the story of the images. This is different to other e-books which concentrate on their text content with little to no imagery within the book itself. As much as I could mix and match layouts throughout my book, these guides on e-books suggest keeping my layout consistent so readers can find the content easily and feel familiar with the layout as they move through the book.
Another tip I found interesting was to include a contents page (they suggest making this clickable; however, I am not sure if this is possible in InDesign my chosen software program). This is to give readers an idea of what is within the book and the ability if they wish to skip to the sections which most interest them. A contents page would also be another chance to experiment with visual elements as well as offering a usability advantage to my readers. As a UX designer, any chance to improve a product’s usability is something I want to include.
E-books in many ways require the same design considerations as any other product I work on, with fulfilling user/reader needs key to their success. Typography, colour, layout and structure all play an important role in this and are crucial to get right. This is especially true in an e-book where there is no place for interactivity or moving elements, meaning that the number of tools I have to make my e-book tell the narrative is reduced. That means that I need to dedicate my time to ensure the elements I can include are on point. An e-book design will provide a different challenge to a narrative website the other possibility I have to choose from for my final deliverable, but that challenge is no less just different.
There are many things to consider as I try to decide whether to create an e-book or a narrative website for my final deliverable. I feel as if taking this deeper look at the challenges of designing an e-book has been useful in helping me to make this decision, I just need to do the same with the narrative website so I can make an informed choice.