IMAGE 1 / The Final cover embodies the Vignelli’s bold design style with colourful graphics and clean type.

The three articles and accompanying assets,
taken from the Design Observer website, focus
on the life and work of these two people, both
as individuals and as a team. From start to
finish, this project was a learning process; one
of the main challenges was designing a piece
about designers who themselves already have
very strong opinions on what design should be.
We wanted to make their visual voice apparent
throughout the ebook despite the restrictions
of the medium.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM /

Simplicity can be a beautiful thing; most
times, less is more. An EPUB, however,
demands simplicity. When our team first began
designing the ebook, we were not clear on
what we could and could not do. We quickly
realized that in addition to being restricted to
the 1024 x 768 pixel dimensions of the iPad
screen, we were also limited by the margins
of the “iBooks’,” which did not leave us with
a big workspace. The level of interactivity

an EPUB offers the user is also considerably
low, especially when compared to the digital
magazines one can produce using Adobe
Publishing Suite, both in the technical and
aesthetic realm.

The EPUB files seemed to take on a mind of
their own; once exported from Adobe InDesign,
they often had myriad problems that had to

be manually fixed in programs such as Adobe
Dreamweaver or Terminal. The most important
lesson that we learned from this experience
was that there is no real value in memorizing
any workflow. The technology is constantly
changing and is being improved to the point
where users have to do less and less.

Craig Mod, a designer and writer, points out

in “Post-Artifact Books and Publishing,” that
“the rules for iPad content are still ambiguous.
None of us have had enough time with the
device to confidently define them.” Being new
to the technology, our group did not yet know
what we could and could not do. We frequently
turned to the internet for tips on how to fix
certain issues; when one person did not have
the solution, someone else did.

GETTING STARTED /

The first step in creating our publication
involved sourcing the material and getting
permission to use it. We contacted the Design
Observer, and obtained written consent to use
their articles for our specific purpose. Next, we
were started creating a concept for our ebook.

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“The electronic book, on the other hand, is not finite

it is forever changeable and belongs to no one.”