Nearrrrrrly done.

Biggish update, still keep forgetting to post, but heres when i am at the mo.

Got all my content sorted and re written in my own words, loads of cool pictures sourced, and learned how to use Bookry properly.

I researched some videos on Glaciers, most of which i found on YouTube.  I saved all the URL's to a pages document, which linked nicely to the website.  Also i used this page to store URL's for just general info sites on glaciers.

So most of my pages are now done, and just need some fine tuning.  Today i decided to up the size of the Sverige Script font on most of my pages, and put a dramatic gradient on all the blue boxes (i do have a bit of a fetish for gradients!).  This is how they are looking so far-

This is the final layout for the majority of my info pages.  There are some exceptions, where the picture just won't work in portrait, so i put it in landscape, but it doesn't interrupt the theme of the ibook.

I was having a bit of a mare with my main interactive picture of a cross section of a glacier. It wasn't appearing on the ibook, as it was appearing on IBA, but Andrew helped me remedy that, and in the process make it better, and full size, as before it was portrait, but now landscape-

Over the course of the day, I've managed to basically finish my ibook. Im going to go over it in the next few days with a fine tooth comb, but I'm fairly pleased with it as it stands.

Messy day

Today was a bit of a write off.  We were told that the BBC was coming on to do user testing, which i was fine with, but it ended up causing a bit of confusion, and distraction, especially on me.  We were moved to another room, and the ethernet cable i plugged in didn't work, plus i wasn't sure when we were going to get called, so didn't bother starting up something, only to get distracted.  Then i managed to get wifi by calling network services, but still couldn't really get into my work due to commission in the room etc. And after 2 and a half hours of waiting, i gave up and went home.

All moaning aside, i did get a few hours work done before all this!  And so far have all my chapter pages done, and the body text is all ready to go in.  Still need to find more pics which i shall do tomorrow.

1st few pages

Had a pretty good productive day today.  Initially i thought i would do all the pages on illustrator as i have more free reign to do what i want on each page, but i think i was just being a bit afraid of Author, and when i sat down and had a good few hours on it, realised its not so bad after all.

So i'd decided previously that i wanted my pages to be consistent throughout, and i really like the layout of the Procreate manual as shown in a previous post, so i was going to use that style, albeit with different colours, colours more representative of the subject, i also don't want too much text on each page, which i think will make it easier to digest.

This is my 1st page so far, not necessarily a finished piece, but I'm happy with it as it stands-

You can see from the similarity to the Procreate manual-

With the chapter pages, I've used one of the pre existing templates, as i think its looks very stylish and contemporary, but added my own typeface choice of Futura medium, and Sverige Script-

But as you can see, it fits well with my 1st page as well.  Ats thats where I'm at, at the moment!

Picture gathering

Had a pretty productive day today, still maybe not as much done as i would have liked but hey ho.  Got the majority of my text content sorted, and got the front cover done.  I wanted the cover to be quite graceful as the word glacier to me is quite a graceful word.  This is the end result-

I'm really pleased with this.  The picture i used was obviously a bitmap image, which blown up to the size that i wanted would have looked horrible and pixelated.  So i done a live trace of it, which inadvertently made it look a bit like a painting up close-

Also managed to gather all my pics for different types of glaciers, which turned out to be a time consuming process, but also quite educating!

Looking at an existing Ibook

I spoke to Andrew the other day about how i was struggling to find an ibook with a good/inspiring layout.  He told me about the Procreate app, and how it has a ibook manual which is free to download, so i went ahead and downloaded it. 
He wasn't wrong.  As soon as i start turning pages, i realised it was just the sort of thing i was looking for.  Very simple layout, minimal amount of text and small images, and very modern looking.

This (above) for example, is one of the opening pages, and i love it.  I wanted to find out who or what company designed it, but there is no info available which is a shame, i guess it was maybe just made in house.

Going back to the design, as you go through the book, you can still see the simplicity, the same background colour, and one simple column of text-

Also the text in a different colour works amazingly well, the blue complimenting the grey perfectly.

Even when you get to the section divider pages, the theme is continued-

This simplicity is definitely something that i would like to try and do in my ibook.

I also did i quick image search for good ibook layout, this didn't actually yield the kind of results i was hoping for, as a lot of ibooks are mainly text, so i changed the search to 'interactive' ibook, and that was a little better.  This one in particular caught my eye, as it uses a template i have seen in ibooks author, which i really like, and am very tempted to use-

Day 2- Fonts and Chapters

Started to really get things moving today, was really in the 'zone' for once.  I initially started out with doing a brainstorm to get the brain cells moving, and this then inadvertently planned the rest of the day out for me.
I started out with experimenting with typefaces that could be appropriate.  This is what i came up with....

I thought i needed a mix of- standardised looking text, like Helvetica and Arial, but then others that just looked 'right'.  Being that a glacier is made essentially of ice, i instantly relate it to ice cream, so fonts that you may use in conjunction with ice cream, seem to go really well e.g. Creampuff and Noteworthy.  The script type fonts- Snell roundhand and Sverige Script, i think also work really well. I was thinking initially about picking one, and using it throughout, but now i think i will use all of them at different stages.

I then chose a few fonts, and incorporated them into some front cover designs.  The cover in my opinion doesn't need to be too complex, a simple but effective title overlaying a large and dramatic picture of a glacier.  I knocked a few out and was pretty content with the result (watch out for them in my pitch!).  

I then gathered all my material from various saved sites, and pasted it for referencing at a later date, into Pages, and roughly organised it into chapters.

I also had a quick play with ibooks author, just to get a feel for what would be done.  This only took a few seconds, but even without the appropriate picture, it already looks pretty good...

So i'm definitely getting more into this as the days go by, and not so overwhelmed as i was when we got the brief.

First I-Books blog post

So its been a while since i posted on here, no ones fault but my own!

New project is I-books, again, as with the video editing project, i was completely out of my comfort zone when we were given the brief,  but from what i was shown to us in the first lesson, i wasn't as freaked out about the thought of it, as i was with the video project.

I was given 'Glaciers' as a topic for my I-book, which i'm fairly content about.  The first thing i did was look up glacier websites, and save them to a blank document so i could look at them in greater detail at a later date.  I did the same with images and also wrote down the names of some famous glaciers, like longest, widest etc.

Today was the first day i really had a chance to get my teeth into my work, as i had missed a day last week, and we did some stuff on how to use i-books author, keynote and bookry.  I found i-books author pretty easy to use, and i know i can definitely get into it.

The logical next step for me was to look at some existing i-books.  So i went to the i-books store, and found the science and nature section, then selected 'free'.  The first thing that caught my eye, was a book called, '10 fun things to do with your microwave', even though it is off topic, i thought i would be interesting, so downloaded it.

Almost immediately i thought it was a bit rubbish! Very boring layout. Then a few pages in, there was a video, about microwaving grapes, sounded quite amusing, so clicked on it, and it opened a link.  I clicked on the play button and it didn't even work! There was a link to google video, that didn't work either, so i went to the next page, same thing! Good thing it was free!

I thought i'd start again with a new book, try and find something a bit more specific, so found a book called 'High mountain glaciers and climate change'.

I thought this would be more appropriate.  Firstly the layout was better, nicer typefaces, but a lot of text.  But a few nice pics and info graphics...

I didn't bother reading much more into it, as i soon gathered it was basically like a school text book.

Well I'm not getting inspiration, but I'm certainly seeing good examples of what not to do!  But credit to the these two books, they are for a specific audience.