Breaking The Page: Content Design for An Infinite Canvas

Some see the iPad and think: it’s perfect for enhancing a book. This workshop is for anyone ready to think bigger. It’s time to enlist the touchscreen as more than just a container for a souped-up stack of pages. The digital display can serve as viewport onto a canvas that extends without limit—not just up, down, left, and right, but also as a creative space offering new kinds of elastic properties: accordion-like documents that house different sized versions of themselves; geometrical shapes across which viewers explore non-linear compositions; even static backgrounds upon which content continuously changes. The challenge lies in tailor-making compositions for these new contours. When you can do things like pinch and spread, refresh content, and pan across a canvas, what kinds of subject matter is best suited for these interactions?

I’ll lead workshop attendees on a tour through a half-dozen very specific examples of born-digital, tablet-friendy designs. Each will illustrate in different ways how ePub3, web-based, and app productions can do more than simply replicate, or merely enhance, a print book. I’ll also give a quick look at how to design this stuff so that, leaving the room, people will feel equipped to go out and plan their own creations. Don’t come to this session if you want yet another look at how Peter Rabbit can be repurposed. The future of publishing lies in making content that debuts on the touchscreen.