Saturday 22 February 2014

blogging question for this week: forms of the digital page

[re-posted with the same content; had some technical trouble with earlier version]

Hope everyone's been enjoying reading week! This week's blogging question will be brief and simple, as I'm typing fast between the second and third periods. To pick up some of the threads from our readings last week on the history of the page, and to get us thinking about e-books for the next few weeks, this week's question asks you to find an example of a digital text, e-book, app, or other form that reinvents the page in an interesting way. Your example might be an innovative example of page design, or it might be a more radical example of an experiment that completely challenges our idea of what a page is. Remember that the kind of design that leads to a well-made page, digital or otherwise, is often subtle, and works best when it doesn't call attention to itself.

You might want to refer back to last week's readings from Piper and Stoicheff & Taylor, or perhaps the recommended readings, to consider some of the themes that connect the history of page design with future possibilities. Given that e-books -- especially EPUB-style ebooks for reading devices, as opposed to apps -- are still in their design infancy, we'll have lots of opportunities to consider how ebooks don't hold up well next to their print counterparts. Let's try to balance that with some examples of how digital page design has succeeded -- remembering, too, that success sometimes takes the form of an experiment that fails, but fails well.

Update: if you can, please include a photo or screenshot so that we can see what you're writing about. If you're unfamiliar with taking screenshots of windows on your computer screen, this is a good chance to learn! Luckily there's an entire organization dedicated solely to educating people on how to take screenshots on different platforms: www.take-a-screenshot.org. Perhaps they have annual general meetings and fundraising drives? They've made an elegant tutorial, in any case.

On another front, given that today's historic hockey game coincides with our assignment deadline, I'm going to be lenient about the 5:00 deadline today. If you're in the Inforum working on your assignment, go find a TV for the third period and start cheering -- go Canada!

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