It has been fun to write The Story, the first book totally conceptualized, written, edited and designed to be consumed on smartphones
The book applies all that I propose for a mobile first strategy.
If we look at how The Story has been designed, you will find that many of the visual recurring visual elements are designed to fit into one screen of the smartphone. One thought per screen is a desired outcome.
Billboards
To that effect, you will sometimes find what I refer to as “billboards”, with a black background and highlighting an important point I wish to make, as we see here:
Notes
Often throughout the book, I wish to incorporate a sort of “whisper” to add texture to the content, and I refer to those as notes:
Segments
The Story does not have chapters. Instead, the various themes are covered as segments, all of which start with a full screen “poster like” visual:
Numbers
Whenever I wish to introduce statistics, I separate them from the narrative and highlight them in a mini poster screen of their own:
Take a look
Sometimes I wish to zero in on a case study, or a very specific example, and we get there via the Take A Look icon:
Quick Chat
And sometimes we call upon an expert to help us understand a specific topic. I am most grateful to have had the expertise of so many of my colleagues in areas such as typography, videos, audio and artificial intelligence.
Other visual elements
In the spirit of utilizing the screen of the smartphone to its full potential, I sometimes highlight statements in a bubble, as we can see here:
Or, I can utilize visual elements that are reminiscent of what we may have seen in books of the19th century, to make a statement stand out:
Mario’s speaking engagements
Keynote presentation: Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS).
Order print edition of The Story from Amazon
You can order the print edition of my new mobile storytelling book, The Story, from Amazon already here:
Pre-order The Story
The newspaper remains the most powerful source of storytelling on the planet. But technology threatens its very existence. To survive, the Editor must transform, adapt, and manage the newsroom in a new way. Find out how, pre-orderThe Story by Mario Garcia, chief strategist for the redesign of over 700 newspapers around the world.
Order here:
https://thaneandprose.com/shop-the-bookstore?olsPage=products%2Fthe-story
The Story will also appear in print
I am happy to announce that we will, indeed, have a print edition of my mobile storytelling book, The Story. I thank you for expressing your interest to our publisher, Thane Boulton, of Thane & Prose. Now the print edition will be a reality, and you can already see the cover and back cover here:
An interview of interest
http://www.itertranslations.com/blog/2019/3/11/fd60ybflpvlqrgrpdp5ida5rq0c3sp
The Inquirer is a brand that always resonates with me, as it was one of my projects in 1996, so I am aware of the traditions the Inquirer folks hold dear. After all, this is a newspaper that even Benjamin Franklin wrote for. I recall, as we were doing the redesign of The Inquirer, when Max King was editor in chief, how I was reminded, at every step of the process, about the newspaper’s history, the brand’s tradition and how to make sure that it was all preserved as we added more color and created a new set of story structures.
TheMarioBlog post # 3099