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The design of multiple media touchpoints alongside the original text, creating an enriched reading experience.

1 Relevant Media 2 Paratext 3 Text

OPPOSITE Detail views of the digital text interface.

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propel users through a narrative while the text itselfis discarded or diluted.

This is not to say this kind approach to designing for classic literature is categori- cally “bad.” Nor is this to moralize exten- sive editorial interventions to the original text to the point of oblivion. Indeed, we often forget that many of Shakespeare’s plays existed as folk stories before they were written for stage production. As origi- nal and adaptation, both Shelley’s text and Inkle’s app are valid forms to experience Frankenstein. However, they are also fun- damentally different modes of experienc- ing the same narrative, and their example is the beginning of a vast landscape with many opportunities. As the book and read- ing behaviours continue to evolve, and culturally significant texts continue to age, designers that work within this space will be confronted with this question: how will they evolve the representation of literary classics alongside changing user behaviours?

Many studios, publishers, artists, and directors have produced and are produc- ing re-imagined retellings of old stories through gamified storytelling apps, com- ics, graphic novels, amplified ebooks, and films. Editorial design for existing texts is now a wide gradient of media. The varied combinations and handling of this media results in a variety of solutions for user engagement with these texts, and such was the fundamental problem of my the- sis project. I chose to design a system for an enriching experience that would not involve a complete upheaval of the original text. I intended to design a book wherein paratextual content and multimedia serve as integral components of the experience and text itself, rather than Ux and UI add- ons. The particular design of the interface was to structurally synthesize text with paratext, and glyphs with imagery. These principles informed the research of con- tent for the project, focused the project’s visual language and form and, ultimately, helped define the changing role of design- ers engaged in similar projects as proposed in the framework developed in my thesis.

The framework’s application in industry implicates a process of collaboration with an editor, with the editor acting as a faci- litator to content research and the designer as primary determiner and executor of content. However, within the time and resource constraints of a short graduate degree, I acted as both designer and edi- tor. Three criteria were considered while selecting a text for this project. The first