TAKEAWAY: My new multitouch textbook, iPad Design Lab: Storytelling in the Age of the Tablet, is finally available! Happy reading!
Update #1: Wednesday, Sept. 26, Tampa, 23:14
It’s finally here.
After eight months of researching, writing, editing, designing and then waiting for Apple to give the book its publishing blessing, The iPad Design Lab: Storytelling in the Age of the Tablet is a reality.
For me and for Reed Reibstein, who as editor and art director for the book was my constant copilot on the journey, it is a special moment that allows us to see all of those efforts crystalized into what I hope will be a helpful guide for anyone involved with storytelling via the tablet.
It is a digital book for our times, whether you are a reporter, editor, designer, teacher, student, or just a tablet user with curiosity about the strategies that lead to good storytelling in this marvelous new platform.
With more than 65 million iPads sold to date, and so many other tablet brands establishing themselves in the market, we will need to learn more about what constitutes effective communication in the platform.
Purchase iPad Design Lab here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/ipad-design-lab/id565672822?mt=11
(Note: Because of Apple’s international policies, this iBooks textbook is currently available in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and U.S. A forthcoming EPUB version will be available in more locations.)
“iPad Design Lab” trailer on Vimeo.
Laboratories are for the curious
This book was born out of my own curiosity.
With the curiosity of a child, I began to play with my first iPad 1 the day it came out over two years ago. That curiosity is still with me, three iPad generations later.
With the 40-year experience of a visual journalist, I immediately began to see the iPad as a marvelous stage on which stories could be told in so many different ways. When colleagues of my generation would tell me that they would “not go there”, I kept reminding them that we all trained to be storytellers, and these are, indeed, the best time to tell stories.
And, so, I made a pact with myself: I would devote occasional segments of TheMarioBlog to discuss whatever I discovered on the iPad.
Like a scientist in a laboratory, the iPad became the “rat” which I dissected daily.
Once I made a discovery, I turned it into a blog entry. I came to call those posts, The iPad Lab.
After about 16 of those, I had plenty of people in the industry and academia insisting that I should string them together into a book. Easier said than done, obviously, since a blog post is a quick reflection, in my case, a daily one. A book needs to be more robust in what it tells and how it tells it.
But the effort was worth it.
Information that moves fast
No book is complete, and most books are outdated the moment they are published. With digital books, it is a blessing that we can update regularly.
Nonetheless, for this first book, perhaps the first written about the journalistic and design aspects of the iPad, I wanted to make sure that we covered a variety of topics that are imminent in any discussions in newsrooms and classrooms.
The book details the Storytelling process, allowing readers to sample a variety of ways in which stories are told. It also takes us to the importance of designing for the brain, the eyes and the finger, so Pop Ups is a formidable chapter that, to me, along with Storytelling, constitutes a centerpiece of the book.
Other chapters cover Look & Feel (what users see first, and how visuals create a sense of branding for the titles in the app), Advertising (this could be a book, by the way, and the one area where I see tremendous potential for storytelling/design…and revenue to all come together), Economics (what is the best plan to generate income through payment for content/subscriptions).
When Reed and I were trying to tap into categories for which this book would qualify, there were more categories than we could use.
This is, first and foremost, a journalism book (in the old fashioned definition of the phrase), but it is also about visual journalism, and it is about art and design, with emphasis on typography, color, grids. It is also a book that is suitable for those in charge of business and technical communication, public relations, and for anyone who is interested in translating information into this digital platform—isn’t that most of us these days??
Welcome to the iPad Design Lab
I hope that The iPad Design Lab: Storytelling in the Age of the Tablet is all of these things, and more.
But, remember, it is a Lab, as the title reflects. The iPad, and tablets generally, are a new platform. We have only scratched the surface of its potential in all the areas covered in the book.
The door to the Lab is wide open. We are all in it. I hope that my book will inspire others to join in, to continue the experimentation.
Let me know what you find out.
The book is already in Australia…
One of the first to send a message about the book is Rob Layton, Director/chief editor at WordMasters and Adjunct Lecturer at Bond University in Australia, who sent this picture, along with a message:
A picnic lunch in our rainforest, kids playing in the creek, and my new book … Welcome to my office 🙂
1st Middle East News Design Conference
It promises to be a great program, and a historic one, too: the first SND Middle East gathering. Put it on your calendars: November 8 & 9, in Beirut, Lebanon. Sponsored by An-Nahar and SND.
For more information:
http://www.snd20events.com/conference/