Surviving change

There's been plenty of change lately but just look at how books have survived from where they first started. Thank goodness for the book designer we say.

The upheaval in the book trade has meant hard times for everyone. With our workloads a bit lighter we have kept ourselves busy and ahead of the game by reading. There is heaps of it to be done. Changes in ebooks and with Creative Suite have meant we now have the technology as designers to offer way more services than ever before. Do ask us before heading off to someone else for help with animation, video and interactive graphics. This round-up from Books in Browsers is a good guide for where we are heading for the future.

Digital publications are now part of our daily production and it's a real pleasure to produce an ebook that values the readers experience. Whether this be in a fixed or reflowable format or an app. The look of your book design is tops and the main element for portraying quality. We have our head around digital covers and can help guide you with innovations in ebook marketing and how to design an ebook wrapper.

images here with links through to portfolio on website that opens in a new window.

We have had a go and entered an ebook title that we recently designed for Scholastic NZ in the Digital Design Books Awards (part of the Digital Book World Conference in New York). Who knows if it will get anywhere. But sometimes you just have to give things a go.

Buy an ebook and enjoy the experience

Check out our ebook designs at the couple of links below for Scholastic NZ books now on Amazon.

"Why should I do that," I can hear you asking.

Well, that's because we have designed them. Now that's a big difference from 'produced' them. We've been blabbing on for ages about how we can 'produce' an ebook for you, which, of course we can do. But what we want to do is design an ebook for you.

When I compare these files with any of the ebooks I have been reading recently, they rock and really give the reader an experience. Judge this for yourself by clicking on the books above and you'll quickly see the difference.

A reader still wants an experience when they are reading, whether that's an ebook or a print book. Our aim is to create one for them.

Next — ebook marketing. We're also working on book trailers and how to get your ebook out there. Design has so moved on from the static image. But a book will always be a book.

Interactive PDF's, animated GIF's and book trailers?

Book trailers and animated gifs. Technology is wonderful and has advanced to the point where you don’t need to use an expensive developer to create your animated gifs and book trailers. If we’ve produced your book, then all the assets we need to create these are already at hand. If you are looking for a cost-effective option like this, then do ask us more.

Anne has had a blast with the personal profiles for our website, which gives you an idea of what we can do. It's all in the imagination.

Interactive pdf's for educational workbooks. We’ve been asked by some of our educational publishers if we can make their workbooks digital. It would be great, they tell us, if students could work directly on screen to fill in worksheets, then email these back to their teachers. Teachers could then mark and comment on the worksheets and send them back to the students. Can it be done? Absolutely.

This interactive pdf is an easy solution that we can customise to your needs. Feel free to download this dummy version and have a play. 

... and this is just the beginning. Do challenge us and see if we can help with your next big idea.

Hot off the press — designs to impress

Here's a handful of recent projects that we have designed both the covers and internals. There's heaps more that we have worked from a clients template or just completed the internals. We can help you in oh-so-many ways.

The third title we have completed by the Topp Twins and Jenny Cooper for Scholastic NZ.

An ebook that matches the design of the successful print book. Our cover design and all.

192 page, 4 colour book for New Holland. Watch out for it in your bookshop soon.

A picture book for Batemans with Errol McLeary.

Pleroma Press have published Joy Cowley's Notes to a Friend as an ebook. We love this fixed layout design.

There's also been a couple of great new titles from Huia.

The Easter Story started life as a print book and now has a digital partner.

Craig Smith is teaming with Scott Tulloch for his next book. Watch out for this before Christmas.

Introducing Carolyn Lewis

Whenever I see a gorgeous book on the shelf I pick it up and immediately look inside to see who the designer was. So many times that designer has been Carolyn Lewis.
When we first opened the Auckland studio, Carolyn sent in her CV. 'Goodie!' was my first thought, but it wasn't quite that easy; it took a couple more years and a baby for Carolyn before she was able to come and join our team.

Here's a peek at some of the work from her portfolio; we'll post her future work on our Facebook page. It will be worth keeping an eye out for.

Email Carolyn at carolyn@bookdesign.co.nz or see her page on our website.

Introducing Rachel Clark

Rachel captured our attention straight away when she answered our 'Help Wanted' ad with this clever advertisement. It was so out there, and really made her stand out from the crowd. Just what we were wanting in a designer.

Rachel trained in Washington DC to gain her BA in Graphic Design and Photography and then moved on to New York to put her skills to the test as a packaging designer.

In the six weeks she has been with us her new ideas and fresh approaches have continued to impress. She sits quietly, listens, takes in everyones needs and then shares her balanced opinion. It's just been great. Check out her personal website if you'd like to see more, but I also need to share these great competition posters she's just created for the Storylines festival. There was very little brief and no images supplied — very clever!

Email Rachel's at rachel@bookdesign.co.nz or see her page on our website

Ebooks — here's how we can help

If you are starting with a print book, then we make sure the designs and files can easily be adapted for their ebook partner, either now or in the future. The nature of the content will help steer the choice between a flowable epub file or a fixed layout.

The design process is about making things look good, and about helping readers capture a visual representation of the words they are reading.

The process isn’t as scary as you might think. We are still using InDesign as our main layout software, and the proofing process is exactly the same; it's just at the finished art stage that we need to choose the pathway — pbook or ebook. Do we convert the file to a high-resolution printable pdf or do we create a fixed or flowable epub?

We have updated and tweaked our in-house InDesign workflow, so we can create clean CSS for every file. It’s all in the way we set things up, and the advantages are that you can choose to go down either the print book or ebook pathway whenever it suits you. Your files are already set to go.

When you go for an ebook, don’t forget about cover design; it still needs to look good, although the focus is very different from a print book. An ebook cover is often viewed at thumbnail size and the buyer will probably only look at it when choosing a book. The rest of the time the cover is not viewed. But if the concept of the cover is changed to a ‘cover wrapping’, incorporating the marketing of other titles in the end-matter, it offers extra opportunities.

Book Design isn’t just a design company, it is an exciting team of people with expert knowledge and an eye on the horizon. My business focuses on emerging trends in leadership so I particularly value Kim’s quest for knowledge and thirst to be on the cutting edge, particularly in the ebook field. Dr Cheryl Doig, July 2013

Every project is different. If you’d like some help, drop us a line.

New Profiles

Anne's been at it again and is continuing to create our new profile animated gifs for both our websites.
Here's the ones for the Christchurch crew. You'll all know Kim, but Trudy maybe a new face for some. She's our wonderful accounts lady who keeps Kim company and on task Monday to Thursday.

Kim almost looks like she's dancing. 

I think Trudy will always be known as money bags now.

The next ones will be for our two new staff members who have just joined us in the last week. Carolyn and Rachel. Watch this space ...

Our Ode to Maria

Our Maria – how she has grown.

It is with very sad faces that we share the news of Maria leaving us this week. She is off on her big OE.

We know it's something that everyone needs to do, but the loss of her smile and skill to our studio will be hard to replace. Maria is the last member of our Christchurch design team and without her wonderful support it is hard to imagine how we would have survived the big move and transition to Auckland.

Maria applied for a Mac Op position in the same year that she finished studying at Nat Col. Her CV stood out from the crowd like a shining light, one that I will never forget. She had taken the time to look at our website and find a connection to our team with a photograph accompanying her application that said 'Hire Me'. How could you not give the girl an interview.

Her organizational skills stood out very early on as she tackled a 140 book educational versioning project and then a huge 800+ page soup book. These were just a warm-up for the next 3 years. Maria has tackled a branding and curriculum upgrade over 3 levels that would make many people's hair turn grey at the thought. In scrolling through the emails just now I saw lots of comments like 'excellent Maria, thanks once again', 'we really appreciate you keeping us informed' and 'great work'.

Our problem though was that she was very quickly out growing her Mac Op role and needed to get her teeth into some real design.

As studio manager, I was really reluctant to lose or distract Maria from the great role that she was doing. Her colleagues urged me to rethink and give her more of a challenge, to let her grow, they'd help, they said. Wow, thank goodness I listened.

Maria's growth is one that I have found extraordinary to watch. I feel so privileged to have her as part of our team (I can't use the word 'had', as I really don't want her departure to arrive). During the earthquakes, Maria was living on the west side of Christchurch, so she had power/water and was the only one who was able to keep the company operating. While most of our clients were understanding and happy to wait - there is always one who would like to 'but'. Maria just did it. We got the files off our server (actually, I think we just gave her the whole server) and she put it all together, while we were all putting our lives back together.

In August 2011 Maria packed up her car and joined her good friend and fellow designer Sarah for the big shift to Auckland. It was her first time away from home and her first time in Auckland. She loved it! For our company, she was our rock. With so many changes and shifting sands, it was Maria who was there to hold it all together. Her knowledge and common sense is so valued and will be missed for a while to come.

I've tried to put together this design story to show Maria's progress over the years. I hope you can see her growth as much as I can. Do look right to the bottom to see what she is working on this week as a fitting end to the pinnacle of her career with Book Design. To any new employer, firstly, please, we want her back. Secondly, you are lucky enough to gain one of the best people I have ever been lucky enough to employ. Our very best wishes Maria, we so look forward to watching your future journey.

 

Please feel free to add a comment and leave Maria a message.

Beattie's Book Blog - unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community: Ann Patchett: 'Authors Need to Get Involved'

Beattie's Book Blog - unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community: Ann Patchett: 'Authors Need to Get Involved': Shelf Awareness "If you had asked me two years ago, I would not have thought it was my responsibility. But I do think authors need ...

Exciting ebooks with Anne Luo

Life has been interesting and sometimes challenging in the studio recently as we push forward with the ever-changing ebook/digital format options for producing books.

More and more the printed page is no longer the final word, we are now being asked to produce books that have an additional life as an eBook, interactive PDF, fixed layout or flowable ePub, to name a few!

Thanks to some real advances with the latest versions of Creative Suite, and streamlining of how we set up our InDesign files we are now (if you listen to Adobe’s marketing) only one click away from producing an ePub file and a beautiful ebook…yeah. This is where we have conquered the most challenges. Our 'Book Design' aim has been to keep the same level of design that goes into a print book coming through to the ebook, e.g. chapter headings, type design, page breaks, text spacing, wrapping, tables etc (we don't want our ebooks looking like digitised manuscripts) and then get the file through the validation process. There are speed bumps here that need fixing. 

Other valuable assets that an ebook has or can have are navigational and local table of contents, searchable content, use of live hyperlinks, inclusion of sound and video, etc. These also all need to work and validate to enhance the readers’ experience. Which is totally what our aim is.

I learnt the secrets of cracking open the epub and editing the codes in toc.ncx and content.opf files (two of most important files in an epub that control just about EVERYTHING). They looked like headaches at the start but got easier and more familiar the more I did. By the time I’d edited, zipped and unzipped, previewed and ran validation tests many, many (and many more) times the validation result was 'Congratulations! No problems were found'. HOORAY!!!

That was the biggest challenge completed, getting the validation problem-free. From here I could move to uploading an ebook to an online reseller. For this we developed an interactive Metadata form with all the questions needed to make the uploading process smooth and easy. 

There are a variety of ebook formats out there and each suits a different type of book. Fixed-layout ebooks are a relatively new kind of ePub. Someone said it is like a hybrid of a PDF with complete control of the pages and a flowable ePub which is an open-source format of digital books. Unlike normal flowable ePubs in which the content flows on in page dimensions and fonts determined by end user devices, we have complete control over the design and page layout in fixed-layout ebooks. The text is alive and searchable in fixed-layout just as in a flowable ePub. We can achieve text sitting on top of images without rasterizing the whole page to a flattened image, like you’d have to do for flowable ePubs. This format is great for children's pictures books, and any books with content-specific layout where text and images need to stay at certain positions.

To achieve these advantages it requires a lot more work cracking the codes in HTML base programs like Dreamweaver, but in many cases it's definitely worth the effort, and the possibilities for this format are very exciting.

We also had a recent project requiring a new level of communication with client returnable interactive PDF forms. These are more advanced than the interactive PDFs we have made in the past, with form fields, clickable internal links and external hyperlinks. Adobe Reader 8 and later users can fill in and save PDF files locally, and send these back to the author electronically. This makes data communication much faster, easier and fun too. You just type an answer directly on the file page and hit the send button. 

This great ability with PDF forms can bring many other projects to the next level. For example, educational books now can have fillable write-on-line and comments fields in an electronic PDF version. Teachers and students who use free Adobe Reader can fill out their answers and comments and send to each other by email. Simple.

So we keep learning, keep learning and keep learning. The more we do, the easier it gets.

Perhaps one day it will be just one click of a button to produce any of the above. But not yet, and that is where we are here to help.

Trade ebooks

Life has just gotten very exciting with Scholastic NZ releasing their first locally published ebook ... all with the help of our services.

New Zealand cover

Australian cover

A Winter's Day in 1939 debuted in print for the both the NZ and Australia market and is now available on Amazon.

It is really important to us that our ebooks capture the same pleasurable reading experience of the printed book and we have proudly captured the main design elements in this digital format. Here's what Scholastic have to say

Animated gifs

Anne has been playing and has made these new stop motion animated gifs for our new profiles that will feature on our website.

They are so cool though that I just had to show them off here first.

Dexter Fry - he promised that no books where damaged in this process

Anne Luo - our wonderful digital creative

Our secretive Maria - you just have to watch out for this girl

It's great the new features that we can now include in ebooks and all sorts of multi-media. Just ask us, we can do all sorts of things ... and yes the team did have as much fun as it looks like they did creating these. Go guys!