Designing for the iPad was quite different than designing a cover or a feature story. However, I kind of liked the limitations. Since I find myself to be typography challenged, it was nice to focus on the pictures and the graphic elements, since I was only limited to using a handful of preselected fonts.
My favorite departments that I designed are:
The landscape view of the books department (here's the splash page)
The landscape view of the music department (here's the last page of the story and the secondary)
The landscape view of the art department (here's the splash page)
Are you noticing a trend here? If not...let me clear it up for you: landscape, landscape, landscape. That being said, it was much easier for me to design in the landscape orientation, which I was rather surprised by. I liked my use of large pictures, which I think will look great on the iPad. One thing that I wish I would have pushed a little more is my other visual elements. I was scared to try new things, since the templates for the designs were pretty much already set in stone (minus the weird changes that Jordin and I had to make).
All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with my designs overall. Next time I work on the iPad, I will push myself outside of what has been already designed so that the viewer experience can be further improved.
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ReplyDeleteYou definitely should be satisfied with your designs! The spreads you posted look really clean and engaging. You can definitely tell that you focused on pictures. That's not to say that the type doesn't look great, I just mean that your used of images and colors is exciting. I like that you went with bold, in-your-face colors (i.e. the yellow and pink on the music department). I can only imagine that those spreads look great on a digital platform. Thanks for going first with the iPad design and sacrificing many hours of sleep.
ReplyDeleteAs far as trying new things, I assume it is kind of hard to really push the limits on the first go-around. Also, I think it is best to keep things clean and simple for splash pages. I would be interested to see some of your other work for the inside spreads. Were there a lot of side bars or info boxes, or was most of your content just straightforward body copy?
Most of the inside copy was straight body text. Which was difficult to present clearly but still incorporate design elements. Plus, you're right. The clean look is really great for the iPad, and it gets content across clearly and accurately. I can't even begin to count the number of apps I've closed simply because they looked too cluttered and my head started to hurt.
ReplyDeleteI love the arts page. The colors really standout and it catches my eye. I agree with Krista that it would be awesome on the iPad. I think it's hard to get too creative with the iPad, especially in department pages because the templates are already laid out for you and they don't want to shock the readers. That being said, since no one really sees our designs but us, maybe we should all just get a little crazy with the iPad!
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