With this project we are supposed to come up with some sort of theme or visual style of how our iBook's will be presented and i decided to take it upon myself to do some visual research so it could give me ideas of what the design and visuals will be displayed on the iBook.
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Because Earthquakes are set all around the world a common setting within earthquakes are cities as when you hear about news from earthquakes or documentaries it usually presents things on cities and the buildings within those cities that can take from small to large impact on the building structures, so i decided to do some visual research in some buildings and the first couple things i found were silhouettes of tall city buildings.
I found most of these visuals on 'behance' where they have a lot of different designers that present their work on this site and a lot of these images gave me ideas on visually how some of the layouts on certain pages could look. A lot of these images are minimalistic and quite neutral as they aren't too detailed. This helped me to think that potentially the simpler the design for the template and visual style of the background and template the better as it would put more attention on the interactivity and the user experience and the content of the iBook rather than only focally on the template which could lead to being too detailed and over the top.
Most of these images are skyline images and a couple of them being more 'silhouette' type of skylines and the last two in particular gave me the idea that i could create silhouette's of the buildings in the city and potentially create some foreground and background buildings to create more interest and visual style to the idea.
Also because earthquakes can be quite gritty from all of the destroyed, crumbling buildings, roads, bridges and tsunami's i was thinking i could implement some sort of texture over this skyline idea to give a somewhat pale and dark feeling to the visual style, making it appropriate as earthquakes are serious, dangerous and destructive and that's what i want to kind of portray in my iBook rather than vibrant, happy, positive visuals and colours as that would contrast my topic for the iBook.
When i was looking for visuals related to earthquakes this Richter scale measuring blueprint visual style came up. I like how they've done this as it works really well and relates to earthquakes and the style works well with the use of blueprints and the measuring earthquake almost builds up the suspense of the earthquake hitting the city. This concept is cool but something i will unlikely pursue or do something similarly to as good as this is, i have a few ideas in mind myself and would more likely like to pursue. However it is still an idea i might consider.
This above is from a Fallout 3 poster and i found this on behance as i was looking for some visual styles to get me inspired and what i like about these posters is that the way they use many layers of environment and its portrayed through the colour, so you can tell what's in the background and whats in the foreground etc. The use of colours work really well and are very pleasing on the eye. These images help to give me the idea that i could play with the use of colour when it comes to potentially doing a skyline view type of theme as i could add buildings that are further away from others and do this by making them a different colour.
My initial ideas:
When i was thinking of how my iBook would look like visually i had to brainstorm some ideas and because my topic for this project was 'Earthquakes' i was kind of unsure how visually it could look like through illustrated graphics or just the layout in general without being boring and using similar background images throughout.
I began brainstorming ideas of an underground theme since earthquakes are to do with tectonic plates which are within the earth's crust. This idea could work really well and at the time i was thinking i could create the graphics myself so it's a bit more lively and vibrant when it comes to the visual style rather than same old images for the template. I then decided to mock up a couple of these ideas using illustrator to kind of portray this idea with underground theme.
I made these in illustrator and based off my visual research i tried to incorporate a type of skyline view with a feel for the earth as well. Some of these are just graphics i made to test the visual style out and some are examples of where or what the content would look and be laid out if i were to go for this visual style. I really like this visual style as its simple but effective and could work really well. The tectonic plate image layout is probably one of my fav ones as it helps to divide the page up well and gives an earthy and skyline feel at the same time.
Obviously I won't be using one of these to represent all of the pages, i will be making a variety of different layouts within the style if i choose to go for it, so the visuals on each page are different, unique and visually pleasing with the layout and interaction for the user.
Another Idea i thought of was a sinkhole type of theme with holes representing the space where the content would do and the way i wanted to do this was incorporate real images an design together in order to get a middle ground so it looks detailed by not fully a real image but with an element of effect tweaking to make it look more appealing.
Here's a mock up of how it could potentially look
This is the sink hole idea, i thought of this as earthquakes can create damage to the ground and other surfaces and i thought that a hole of some sort would be a good and different way to contain contain in. The white related content is just to present the ideas i have for where the content would be placed in a visual style like this. If i went with this idea i could use different pages with different or multiple holes in order to contain the content in. This concept is slightly more gritty and relates to the earth and the damage earthquakes can do, so it relates to the topic of earthquakes.
My only concern with this concept is that it might get a bit repetitive and boring after a while, obviously i will arrange and try my best to make it look different on each page with the holes and the use of interaction and quizzes and diagrams and videos i feel like it could still work really well and be a very engaging and visually pleasing iBook.
My impression of this idea from someone else's perspective if i was interested in earthquakes and found an iBook designed like this would probably be that the idea and concept is good and the style relates to earthquakes. However my impression from another point of view is kind of invalid because i haven't got any interactions or content or started building it yet to know what my impression would be from a different perspective.
There were some other ideas i have relating to a scrap book or a photograph kind of theme within the iBook but these ideas are too unoriginal and for a topic like earthquakes i thought it wouldn't work as well.
At the moment I am struggling to comprehend a potential graphic style for this iBook as my topic is hard to create a visual style for and to be honest I'd like to use images for a template but to me that would mean it not being a unique iBook and being like all the same which kind of seems like the easy way out so I'll continue to experiment with ideas for visual styles and most likely ask the class for presentation what they think of the visual styles i've created and i'll be open to suggestions for other ideas.
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