Design Ideas

After doing some research in to the content which is in my Great Grandma’s account, I then went on to start thinking about how I want my Ebook to look. Initially I wasn’t to sure about how I wanted it to look and didn’t really know where to start as I was mainly focusing on the content. During a lesson I was talking to Andrew about my idea and he came up with a suggestion of looking at wallpaper, I really liked the sound of this idea and after he showed me some examples of 1940’s wallpaper (which is the time in which the account is about)  I started to think of ideas of how I could use this within my Ebook.

These are some examples of 40’s wallpaper that I found. In my sketch book I will be experimenting with different ideas for page layouts using the wallpaper.

I have started doing some really rough mock ups to see what the wallpaper would look like in relation to the content that I have got. In Photoshop and Illustrator I have taken some of my photographs and put them in different picture frames, I then scattered them across the page so that it looked they were hanging on a wall. As I was doing these mock ups, I thought that this would be an ideal way to display my photographs in my Ebook. 

Having the wallpaper on the whole page, I think will only work on the page with all the pictures which will be the 'Gallery' chapter. However I want to have this as part of theme of the whole Ebook and I think it will too much to have my text content and animations on top of the wallpaper; I feel that the text will not be as clear and I don't think it will look effective it was a full page throughout the book. After presenting my pitch I mentioned and I asked Kate what she thought, she suggested that I could just have parts of the page with the wallpaper, for example just along one side of the page. I thought that it sounded like a good idea and in my sketch book I have started experimenting with different page layouts using the wallpaper.

After coming up with these mock ups, it got me thinking about my introduction animation and how I want it to look. I thought that it could be a good idea to continue with the 40's wallpaper theme and incorporate that into the animation. I have come up with a basic storyboard to show how the animation could possibly look. 

The idea that I've come up with is to have a wall with pictures and quotes and gradually it will pan along whilst zooming out. The pictures will be relevant to the account and the quotes will be taken out of the account.

As well as thinking about my introduction, I started thinking about what sort of animation will be inside the Ebook. I'm not to sure that I want an animation on every page as I don't think it would be neccessary to the content, however I do want to include some audio of the account in each chapter as well as imagery.

In my sketchbook I have started sketching and noting ideas for the different sections in my Ebook.

The screen shot above is some ideas that I have started coming up with for the 'Rationing' page. On the left side I have sketched some images of food that I could use in my book. As my Great Grandma lists the foods that were rationed I wanted to demonstrate this with images and also an animation. On the right side I have drawn a small sketch of the page layout and what content I would like to include on the page.

I then went on to start thinking about my animation for the 'Rationing' page. My initial idea that I have got is that as the foods are being read out, the table will gradually fill up with the relevant foods.