On ebooks and beauty
The ebook/print debate has been well and truly on the burner for some time now, but what with all the discussion going on lately, particularly since last month’s Meanland event, I’m less interested in the question of whether we will be reading digitally (my answer being yes, we will), and more concerned with the question of how.
If we accept that a large part of the future of publishing lies on screen, then the presentation of content will become increasingly important. The devices on which we read are just as rich and varied as the opportunities presented in print. Instead of coffee table books, large print, magazines, novellas, journals and textbooks we have web browsers, iPads/iPhones, Kindles, Blackberries, eco-readers and probably many more to come. Text will need to adapt to this – not only in terms of being fluid enough to jump from device to device, but also with regard to aesthetics, which in turn brings me to my next point: on ebooks and beauty.
Another part of the digital discussion involves the belief that as the ebook market continues to grow, print will need to reassert itself based on its distinguishing strength: physicality. While ebooks are generally thought of as vehicles of convenience, saving us time and space, print books are already acquiring something similar to the collectability of the antiquarian trade. They will most likely be marketed and bought on the basis of desirability – beautifully crafted, made to last and fetishised in their own right. I agree that this seems like the smart move, but I also think that it’s important to remember the digital, with all its impatience and forward-thinking savvy, has vast potential with regard to design as well.
We don’t usually think of ebooks or websites as objects of beauty, yet why not? Just because something occurs on screen doesn’t make it any less sensory or moving, although granted the experience differs from that of print. These two websites but Spanish musos Labaut and Singaporean graphic designer Jonathan Yuen immediately spring to mind as examples of this.
On another level, there’s even the changing face of typesetting and typography as content moves gradually online. I’m no expert on this so it would be great to hear the thoughts of people in the industry, but even from a novice perspective it seems to me that there is much to talk about here, particularly if publishers take on web typography with the same gusto as applied to print. I would argue that the screen is clearly not the same as paper, and that publishers shouldn’t be too keen to simply replicate what’s on the page. Many say that they find it difficult, whether conceptually or practically, to read long form text on screen, yet I wonder if this is more a case of us still waiting for the right way for content to be presented digitally, as well as a question of familiarity. Robert Bringhurst, regarded by many as the ‘consummate typographer’ once wrote that ‘typography exists to honour the content’. Kevin Zurawel echoes this with an eye on the digital on his design studio blog:
I propose that the e-book can serve as a blank canvas on which an entirely new art of typesetting can flourish. What we have currently is a system that creates beautiful printed books and then translates them into e-books in imitation of the original. Where we need to end up is a system for creating beautiful e-books from the beginning, with their own standards and conventions. As e-books become more popular, I think we will see a revolution in how we conceive of the ‘book’ as an object.
What will matter here are things like negative space, font size, useability, line spacing and how we construe ‘turning a page’ (have a look at this article by John Boardley of ilovetyopgraphy, which incidentally is another wonderfully designed site, for a breakdown of the basics). According to this piece in Publishers Weekly, ‘[t]he eye works best with 50-65 characters per line (10 to 11 words)’. At the moment, Kindle and Sony e-readers contain 43 characters per line, although this can be varied, and iPhones 26. On his Books in the age of the iPad project, Craig Mod argues that content can be divided into two strands: Formless Content, for text commonly found in fiction and non-fiction, which can be ‘reflowed into different formats and not lose any intrinsic meaning’, and Definite Content, which is composed of ‘images, charts, graphs or poetry’ and has inherent meaning and quality dependent on its layout. Definite Content is something that ebooks still struggle with, although Mod puts his faith in the iPad to resolve this.
In lieu of a closing point, here are two more links for those interested in taking ebook/web design a step further.
The first is Monocle, a new ebook reader from Inventive Labs (who also designed the website for yours truly). This works on almost any format – Safari, Firefox, iPhones, iPod Touch and Android – and comes free under the MIT open sourcing licence. Better yet, it has great flexibility for those who want to experiment with ebook layout, page turning, contents and font.
The second is Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (a tribute to the above mentioned Robert Bringhurst and his much-respected book, Elements of Typographic Style). Self-explanatory, although I should note that this harks from 2005 (possibly way back in digital years).
And cheers to Robert Corr and Alien Onion for links to Mod and Yeun respectively.
This post has been cross-posted from Spike