As a book design studio we have focused on designing covers and complex layouts for print. We’re continuing to do print design. Actually, that is Ceci’s specialty. But we’re adding a new specialization: the design of mobile apps. One might even say “books as apps”, but that’s not quite right.

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.

Katie Peek over at A Canary in the Data Mine: Explorations of Data Analysis and Information Display blog posted an interview with me on the topic of book design and the changing world of electronic publishing.

The day after. This is a book design blog, so you’d expect me to write about iBooks, the dazzling ePub reader built into the iPad. But I’m not. (Well, I will a bit). And I’m not going to write about what features are lacking in iPad (first generation, after all) or if there’s even a market for this type of device: duh. And I’m not going to waste time debating the backlight. There are a lot more important things to do, such as figuring out how to design content for this new device. Notice: I said designing content, not designing e-books.

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.

When people say the word e-book they don’t always mean the same thing. The distinction among types of e-books is very important when it comes to e-book design.

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.

As specialists in book cover design, as well as page layout, we’ve long been on the fence about e-books (as incarnated in the form of Kindle & the like). But we’re jumping in and will soon offer e-book design as part of our core book design services.

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.