Ebooks are convenient, nobody will discuss with that. You can easily search and annotate them, or share a passage on Facebook. They can be adjusted to reader’s needs and taste. But have you ever thought of them as beautiful things?
The list of benefits ebooks offer is longer, but the fact they can give what any other beautiful thing gives, is not on the list. The process of accepting an ebook happens only once and it usually goes without reflection on the beauty of electronic books.
Giving an experience of pleasure and satisfaction is what beauty is about. For me, and I’d like to say it loudly, ebooks are beautiful – because they give pleasure. I’m sure many people can admit it, but probably only few have realized there is nothing wrong with saying that.
Most of people who are reluctant to ebooks are driven by emotions evoked by the beautiful scent of old books. This is probably number one reason to say “no” to ebooks, and nobody can say there is something wrong with this ultra-emotional attitude.
Print books are beautiful, but not only because they’ve got an addictive scent. Print books are beautiful, because they offer us knowledge and wisdom, and because they are beautifully designed. Now we can say the same thing about digital books.
Still, for many people, ebooks are a badly designed text document, with black-and-white roughness and a boring-to-death style of Times font family. It was true ten years ago, but not now. The beauty of ebooks can’t be created through automatic file conversion. More and more graphic artists create covers and inside design specifically for electronic editions.
Designing for the screen is different, if not more complex than for the print. You have to consider different viewing options, different screen sizes, proportions, and resolution. Designing standalone book applications, with a plethora of interactive elements, is a state-of-the-art that deserves a separate blog post.
There are many great examples that could illustrate how well ebooks can be designed, but I’d like to share just one book – the one that made me feel like being exposed to a beautiful thing.
It’s The Death of Bunny Munro, written by Nick Cave, and developed as a wonderful book app by Enhanced Editions. Launched in the iTunes AppStore in September 2009, the app came with great book extras: the original music, the full audiobook read by Nick Cave himself, as well as video clips.
I bought The Death of Bunny Munro for €19.99, and it was a well-spent money. The book gives the pleasure when you take it, look at it, read it, watch it, and listen to it. The book’s trailer below very well illustrates that the beauty of the print book can be successfully continued in the digital form.
Print books come with a “fixed beauty”. You can’t change it, because this beauty is shaped on the printing press. When you turn to digital book things are different – essentially different when it comes to rules.
With ebooks you can define your own beauty. Almost every book application and e-reader software offers options to adjust typeface, font size, and background. Therefore, no matter which book you read, you’ll see the inside design that in a best possible way fits your reading preferences and fulfils the desire to deal with the beautiful thing.
For a long time, since I started reading ebooks on Stanza application on the iPhone, I had medium-size Georgia font on a sepia background as my beloved “beauty” set. My default e-reading application is Kindle for iPhone/iPad, and for some time now, I use Caecilia font, the same one that is a basic reading font on Kindle devices. Simply speaking, I cannot imagine reading a book with options set differently.
“I set up a font face and size” – I know, it sounds very down-to-earth. Is that enough to call something “beautiful”? Sure, it is. Once you define your own way the ebooks should look like, you will become addicted, and will start defending it – just like you defend anything that’s in harmony with your nature.
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