Previous Student iBooks

After doing some research on some existing iBooks i kind of came to the assumption that a lot of iBooks out there weren't the greatest with both interactivity and layout and design, so our teacher Andrew placed some iBooks previous students on the course had made, and this gave me the chance to look at what other people made whilst doing the same project for this course and what they did with design and layout and interactivity for their iBooks.

The first example is one based around Antarctica and they covered penguins in the iBook and as I was browsing through the iBook it was visually pleasing with the use of type and use of imagery going on the background.

Fig 1, 2 and 3 - Antarctica iBook (Previous Students)

The use of type was well executed and the colours work well together. I like how they added different types within the sections and chapters as it gives a very visually pleasing feel to the iBook and i like how they played with type and created boxes fro the type and the way it has been laid out as well is very successful. The use of faded imagery in the background relates back to the theme and makes the overall look and feel of this iBook visually engaging.

Fig 4 - Antarctica iBook (Previous Students)

Most of the pages look like this above, and this is how its been layout, almost throughout the iBook. Even though the style at the beginning looked really attractive i'm unsure with this layout, its not really the layout but more the colours i.e. the yellow. I can understand that yellow would relate more to birds and it looks okay but it looks a little bit out of place and I think because of the earlier type and imagery it was all black and white and i feel these should stick with it throughout because the yellow looks slightly out of place.

Fig 5 - Antarctica iBook (Previous Students)

Fig 6 - Antarctica iBook (Previous Students)

A lot of the other content they add occasionally looks like these two examples above. This isn't really a bad thing because i feel like the layout and the simplicity works and links in well with the type etc style they went with earlier but i feel like they could explore more of type with the titles to make it pop out and create more engagement and visual style.

From what I saw there was a small amount of interactivity as i skimmed through the iBook, but generally there was the basic interactions i.e. gallery, quiz etc and above is an example of some images relating to penguins which is pretty cool, and this gallery covers up the full page which i find quite interesting as it allows the user to fully engage with the interaction and be able to clearly see what the images are in detail and this concept is something i might do when it comes to adding certain visual elements and widgets in my iBook.

Fig 7 - Antarctica iBook (Previous Students)

Fig 8 and 9 - Earthquake iBook (Previous Students)

This was another example of an iBook that was made by a previous student from this course, and this was to do with earthquakes which is the same topic as me so at first i was quite interested to see what the style and overall appearance and interactivity was in there.

To be honest I was slightly let down as the layout was very simple and the content was structured simply to with a couple of interactivity within the right side of the iBook. The visual style uses a faint starburst style which is subtle but looks very basic and unengaged f a style for an iBook to do with earthquakes.

Fig 10 - Earthquake iBook (Previous Students)

Most of the interactivity is all the same but above is an example of an interactive diagram which allows the user to black and zoom in on information where the dots are placed which is cool. The starburst being more visible helps to bring the map to life and the colours from the map work well with the visual style colours, so they've been taken into consideration. However the overall visual style is somewhat lacking.

With another iBook i found from a previous students, this one was slightly more different from the other two through visuals and layout etc. This topic was related to migration in the different specices and was done in a type of scrapbook style and when i first saw it i thought "wow".

Below are a couple of screenshots from this iBook what show the content and the way its laid out with the visual style.

Fig 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 - Migration (Previous Students)

What I like about the design is that it's different and unique and I like how this person approached the way of designing it and you can see that they put a lot of thought, effort and love into this iBook and this is shown through the attention to detail of the layout and style.

The use of text within the pieces of card and paper adds to the visual style of the scrapbook theme and it also structures the content and text really well. There is a decent amount of interactivity with sound and video widgets added which makes the overall iBook more visually engaging. The design and overall style of the iBook looks really personal and distinctive and that's why i like it so much and how they added different textures to the background to add to that  type of collection, scrapbook style. Overall it is a really successful iBook when it comes to overall design and layout, and i'm jealous.