While there is a significant learning curve for new app developers, Apple provides an extensively documented environment for building apps. The learning curve is about three months to obtain a firm understanding of developing apps in Objective C and Apple’s SDK (known as Xcode). Clearly, though, the learning of new techniques and more involved aspects of the iOS SDK is an ongoing and never ending process. Again, that’s also true for any development environment.

Some sort of programming background is essential for coming to terms with the tools for iOS app development. Experience in a C-based language is helpful but not necessary, though having a basic understanding of how a programming language functions is essential. Those with only a background in scripting languages such as PHP or JavaScript will have a slightly harder time but not so much harder. Personally, I actually find Objective C a lot simpler to understand that JavaScript but that might simply be the way my own mind is wired.

Developing a native app requires a very different mindset than developing for the Web. The screen dimensions is only one aspect. Apple provides great guidance in its interface guidelines. And there are many technical issues. You must deal with memory management. Xcode provides both an iPhone & iPad simulator but what works on the simulator may not work on the actual device, which has much stricter memory limitations than a desktop machine. The complexity of loading views (i.e., a screen of information) is not nearly as simple as making an href link to a new Web page. In iOS a lot more is going on behind the scenes. Of course, that also opens up a great deal of functionality, features, and capabilities that can be presented in a native app.

Knowing how to take advantage of those features in native apps requires an understanding of the possibilities presented by iOS. And that’s where the design of the app is so very important, and not just the visual, graphic design but the underlying structure and functionality of the app. The value of an app rests in the functionality, which really needs to be something more than a page curl animation. That’s merely eye candy. The task of conceptualizing an app is the most difficult part of working in Apple’s app world. But that’s nothing new. System analysis and design always has been more difficult than programming.

I’m not exactly talking e-books or even enhanced e-books (as those are variously defined). Certainly, there is a demand and need for e-books based on a reflow format (e.g., EPUB) and also for digital facsimiles of print books (e.g., PDFs). No need to debate that issue any further, though I’m not quite sure about enhanced e-books where audio or video is simply stuck inside a long-form narrative or tacked onto the end.

The work that consumes most of my time these days involves stepping back and thinking about the structure and presentation of content on smart phones and tablets without staying within the traditional concept of a book. Indeed, the book as app is not a book at all, but a variation on materials and capabilities where the end result is a compelling product that people want to buy.

Stay tuned for a lot more on this topic.

“I’m designing a layout for books and need lots of inspiration. It’s hard to find it in google. Any idea where a good place to start?”

THE SHORT ANSWER:
it’s in front of you, in the manuscript.

NOW THE LONG ONE: how to find it in the manuscript?

I would start by forgetting about looking for “inspiration” in Google or examples of other book designs.
Why? Simply because nothing you may find there will be done for that particular book. You would have not being hired if the design was out there. Neither should you wait for something magical coming from beyond. But you must work towards finding something that strikes you from the manuscript.

In first place, reading the manuscript will give you a general idea of the kind of design the book needs:

• is it a manual? Ask yourself how could you make it clear where instructions begin and finish? Explore font weight variations or different typefaces. Think about what kind of indicators could help the users when troubleshooting.

• is it non-fiction narrative? Help people understand the concept better with a layout that aids the reading of the text. Think of spacing, letter size, white space, clarity, etc.

• is it a 400-page novel? Make it comfortable to read by using a typeface and layout for optimal reading. Give people space to hold the book in their hands, such as good margins to rest a thumb on the bottom of the page, and on the side to turn the page.

• a workbook? Allow the readers to breathe between exercises. Think of white space. Help them with simple typefaces, such as sans serifs, and give readers room to think and work their way through the book.

• an inspirational book? Inspire them with a wonderful harmony between image and text. Consider typographical images, watermarks, and beautiful capital letters.

When you have the general idea, work on each particular aspect. Here the list could be endless, for every book is unique and alive in its own right.

As designers, we must find the best graphical way to present a book for a good understanding and reading. Each book carries within it a unique space, color, and contrast that provides a rhythm. Like music. We designers also need to remember that the best book design is invisible: guiding the reader effortlessly through the book. That can only happen if the design emerges from the manuscript. No other way.

Looking at other people’s work may be inspiring. I am inspired by other designers, but also by writers, by constructors, by a perfect color palette found on a petal, by dairy workers, by calligraphers, by the sun melting the ice in the early morning. By people that love what they do. By seeing dedication. To me, inspiration is the movement that such a sight provokes the desire to improve.

What is inspiration to you?

We’ll be discussing this book’s design a lot more but for a look at the cover go to the publisher’s page.

iBooks is a response to the market-driven phenomenon of people wanting to read hundreds of pages of text on a computer screen. Is that the best we can do, read text on a screen? Personally, I want to use an ultra-modern computing device for engaging with content in ways not possible merely with text. (Of course, I’m talking primarily about non-fiction here. I love literary fiction & the interplay of words, sentence after sentence, though I still prefer my novels in print. But that’s just a personal preference.)

And I’m not talking about enhanced e-books, which often mean no more than just some multimedia tacked onto the end. Adherents of e-books are constantly stressing the importance of breaking away from the concept of the printed page. Yet, the ePub reader on iPad uses a page concept & strongly reinforces the concept of the physical book (transplanted to the screen).

I’m interested in breaking away from the concept of the page & the physical book. But I’m not too interested in a lengthy stream of re-flowing text. The page, the physical book, & even the re-flowing text are all great in their own ways if you want is to read 80,000 words on a topic. But I seldom have that much time. But I am interested in learning. And don’t we read non-fiction because we want to learn?

Maybe I only need a stimulating 10,000 words arranged in even smaller, bite-sized chunks seasoned with imagery for obtaining an overview of a topic. A multi-touch screen allows me to interact with the content, furthering my retention of ideas. A playful, game-like component pulls me further into the narrative. (Remember, narratives don’t have to be linear or even textual.) I would buy such a product, a content app that started me along the journey of exploring an unfamiliar topic. I love to learn, I love to read. So what’s next: I would then purchase a more in-depth book on the topic (either in print or as an e-book).

Listen up publishers: you just sold me two separate products. Think about that.

How can digital media aid in learning about a topic in a visually engaging manner? That’s the challenge we should address in designing for the iPad. The iPad gets us a big step closer.

As I think about designing content for the iPad, I’m not thinking so much about ePub. I want to breakout of whatever constraints & restrictions imposed by the ePub rendering engine. The iPad provides a robust canvas. When I think of paid content on the iPad, I’m not just thinking e-books. I’m also thinking apps.

The app development environment for iPhone is superb and is the basis for the iPad SDK. There’s an NDA around the iPad SDK beta. So, no specifics here.

Here at sorodesign we are working to develop some apps for the iPhone & the iPad that revolve around content but are not at all what one would think of as e-books or even enhanced e-books. We’re experimenting. Designing for the iPhone & the iPad requires creativity. That’s exciting.

And what is required from all of us for devices like the iPhone, the iPad, & similar products from other vendors that will come along: new ways of writing, editing, designing, publishing, & reading.

From Rich Merrit’s review:
“Banker by day, stripper by night. Twenty-one year old Tom Marino invites you to be a voyeur on a year of his life, one of youthful exuberance and mistakes, loves and loves lost. Enjoy a sexy romp through the late eighties from Philadelphia to New York. You will cry, laugh and grow angry along with Tom as the man he loves takes advantage of him…. His honesty makes this a compelling read and perhaps you will avoid his mistakes, or if you don’t, perhaps you will have as much fun making those mistakes as he did.”

This is how I love to describe the book: Tom was married, worked in a bank & lived a straight life. When he started stripping & fell in love with a guy, it all changed. The book is a ‘naked account’ of his love story during that first year as a gay man. Oh yes, we had fun working on this book design.

AS A FIRST STEP WE LOOKED FOR THE BOOK CONCEPT:
A LOVE STORY.

THE BOOK COVER

I consider memoirs delicate works by definition, so it needed to be treated carefully and at the same time it had to be true to the content, including many stripping nights & hot scenes.  After reading the book and discussing the cover concept with the author we decided to go with a hot-love cover. The challenge was to keep it masculine, because that is also true to the story. Helvetica Neue Caps with strong weight variations was a big part of the answer.

THE PAGE LAYOUT

For the layout, I gave it good margins for holding the book (ideally, the reader’s thumb will fit in the interior margin to hold the book in your hands) and also for resting the eyes. (The book is about 380 pages). For the text:  Caxton Light, a very readable font that allows the text block to breathe in a normal line-height due to its small ascenders & descenders.

The Helvetica Neue in different weights (from the cover) worked well for the headings and Table of Contents.

MISC

Using the story told in the book as a theme, I’ve done a set of broken-heart-icons to use in different pieces (back cover, chapter numbers, website & more).

THE WEBSITE

The Web site for Tomorrow May Be Too Late has grown quite a bit from the initial idea: we started with a basic book Web site (cover, blurb, reviews, about the author and about the book).

Later we added new features:

• We integrated an author blog to the Web site.
• Shopping cart -very important if you are self-publishing!
• The time frame of the book (’80s) was used to create a soundtrack page with the music mentioned in the book.

In the world of big commercial publishing e-books are nearly synonymous with Kindle. (And I’m including related formats such as EPUB in this category.) These e-books are designed for use on dedicated reading devices or other portable devices (e.g., iPhones). The key concept here is re-flow: forget about pages, as in printed books. The e-book is a stream of text that automatically re-shapes itself depending upon the width and length of the screen. And forget about design, at least for now. Currently, designing this type of e-book is all about making the e-book look as decent as possible within the severe limitations of e-book reading devices.

E-books based on re-flow are here to stay. But I’m betting within a few years that the design capabilities for this type of e-book will improve. That will happen in the same way Web design has improved over the years. Or, possibly, perhaps re-flow e-books always will be the bare-bones version of books.

As long as people are happy to buy that format, why should publishers spend the money to make the content formatted any better when there’s always the alternative of PDF and even print for those who want a more typographic experience. The good aspect of all this is that consumers may be able to read books in whatever format they prefer.

Actually, with all the announcements coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the capabilities for better looking e-books may be approaching even more rapidly than I expect. Then again, after working with technology for a couple of decades, I know that real change doesn’t happen as quickly as press releases are spit out by marketing departments.

The other common definition of an e-book is PDF, where what you see on the screen looks like the printed page. This works fine on a decent-sized screen (i.e., desktop, laptop, or even a netbook), but is painfully difficult on a small screen. From a design perspective, PDF offers the most flexibility and is the easiest to produce if you already have the book designed for print.

E-books based on PDF are here to stay.

A variation on the PDF e-book is the screen-oriented PDF: the content is designed to fit the screen and resembles a fantastic PowerPoint presentation more than a book. These screen-oriented PDFs are more like a brochure, usually less than 50 pages, and often given away for free. As with any type of PDF, the screen-oriented PDF offers a lot of options for the designer. Commercial publishing houses are not too interested in this format, but Internet marketers make a lot of requests for it.

Enhanced e-books are yet another category: text-based e-books supplemented with visuals and additional features such as audio or video interviews with the authors and other background information. Commercial publishers seem very interested in enhanced e-books for the value-added features, which in turn can result in a higher price for enhanced e-books. Of course, all that material also simply could exist on a Web site. But how do your charge for a Web site? Hence, back to e-books where there’s an easily recognizable price model for consumers.

And what about e-books and magazines that follow a cloud model? That’s worth exploring in a post all its own.

We enter e-book design with great frustration, not out of any quaint allegiance to print but with annoyance that manufacturers of e-book reading devices don’t grasp that we are now in the third decade of the Web. The current technologies underlying the Web offer tremendous flexibility for crafting beautifully designed sites, incorporating a range of media already supported on multiple devices. Designing on the Web is technology-driven, and the technology is robust. On the Web (as in print) designers have the tools to create superb works, limited only by the skills of the designer.

We wish to create e-books with the tools at hand. Instead, Amazon and Sony (along with a mushrooming mass of imitators) are transporting us back to a stage of technology development that resembles the early 1990s. I was developing Web pages in 1993 and can’t help but experience flashbacks every time I dive into formatting an e-book for either Kindle or EPUB.

That’s no knock against format, either Kindle or even EPUB. These formats are essentially HTML & CSS (though a limited subset). My primary irritation is the way e-book reading devices render HTML & CSS and the corresponding ways that publishers think of e-books based on this model.

If an e-book (as defined by Kindle, EPUB, etc.) is basically a group of HTML pages styled with CSS and bundled for offline reading (with or without a DRM wrapper), then is it really so difficult to implement a rendering engine that supports HTML & CSS as we use it today on the Web?

Meanwhile, I’ll try to temper my moaning about the limitations of e-book devices, though I feel like I’ve been through this before.

In the early years of the Web, designers stayed on the sidelines. Sites were designed by programmers (myself included) or self-taught designers. Eventually, people who really understood graphic design and visual communications entered Web design, and we have a more beautiful online world. And that, too, will happen with e-books. And, someday, the people who really understand reading and writing in digital media will step in, freeing the e-book from its linear, text-oriented form, and helping us recognize that there’s more to offer than merely converting 300-page narratives to e-ink.

How long to wait? There’s a collective sense that the only hardware manufacturer who has ever understood design and the digital life (Apple) will snap us all out of our preoccupation with the current life form of e-books with a portable device that more fully supports the display of a bundled set of Web pages styled with CSS. We’ll see. Now, back to messing around with the Kindle.

Fiction narratives in print are generally all about text, unless it’s a graphic novel, a children’s book, or a novel by Sebald. (Actually, we recently did the illustrations for a work of literary fiction to be published by Holt in June 2010, but that’s another post). In designing a book of fiction, the book designer’s job is to present the text on the page in a way that is highly readable and without interrupting the reader’s experience of the story, or, in John Gardner’s words, “a vivid and continuous dream”.

But non-fiction almost always benefits from making the narrative more visual. Absent the hands of an extraordinary writer, non-fiction books often transport the reader not into a glorious dream but to a snoozefest (where the dream is probably something other than the book).

Making the narrative more visual doesn’t necessarily mean the use of images. It’s also about the use of white space & visualizing blocks of text on a page. (You’ll notice that writing for the Web is about much the same thing). Of course, decisions about chapter lengths, section sizes, etc., are the domain of the writer & editor, but book designers have a lot of latitude in how to present the text.

A friend recently gave us a set of three great books by Edward Tufte that came out in the 1990s: Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, & Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative.

Tufte gets to the heart of what book design is all about without talking specifically about book design: the arrangement of information on the page (or, increasingly, the screen as in the case of e-books).