Thompson Educational Publishing
Digital eBook Design and DevelopmentClient Overview
Thompson Educational Publishing develops books and supplemental materials for instructors and students across Canada. Their books can be found at all levels of education including Primary, High School, College, and University. Rowan Thompson, TEP’s Owner and Business Director, has made a commitment to push the publishing industry into the future by harnessing new media solutions like eBooks, Mobile and Web Applications, and eReaders.
Incorporated in 1989, Thompson Educational Publishing has been providing quality textbooks to schools across Canada.
Challenge
For their soon to be released Healthy Active Living textbook, TEP went with a wonderfully graphic layout filled with bright colours and images. This design speaks well to the High School demographic that gets bored easily with text heavy content. They needed this design style to come across not only in their print textbook, but also the digital version that is available through the Thompson Educational Publishing web app.
Previously converted print to digital books had lost the look and feel. Many were imported to digital using an automated system that overlooked key design elements like text sizes, colours, image placements, and even the fonts themselves.
Challenge
For their soon to be released Healthy Active Living textbook, TEP went with a wonderfully graphic layout filled with bright colours and images. This design speaks well to the High School demographic that gets bored easily with text heavy content. They needed this design style to come across not only in their print textbook, but also the digital version that is available through the Thompson Educational Publishing web app.
Previously converted print to digital books had lost the look and feel. Many were imported to digital using an automated system that overlooked key design elements like text sizes, colours, image placements, and even the fonts themselves.
Solution
Responsive framework
The Keller Creative took a deep dive into understanding how the digital book would be viewed. One of the amazing features of the publisher’s web app is its fully responsive interface (meaning the size and layout adjust to fit your viewing device whether it’s a desktop computer or portable tablet). Knowing this, we approached the layout much like we would a website. We first designed simple wireframes for desktop and mobile that would later be built into the responsive framework for the book.
Styles that makes sense for digital
You might assume if we want the digital book to look as close as possible to the print version, we would use the exact styles. This isn’t the case, reading text on screen is an entirely different experience than reading from print. For this reason, we needed to adjust the book styles to be optimized for viewing on screen.
Print Book Body Copy
10pt type
15pt leading
“Musculoskeletal fitness refers to muscular strength and muscular endurance, as well as to the mobility of your joints.”
Digital Book Body Copy
18px type
30px line height
“Musculoskeletal fitness refers to muscular strength and muscular endurance, as well as to the mobility of your joints.”
Creative CSS
The book is filled with marvellously graphic headlines, captions, quotes, and specialty sections. It was important that we captured these elements in the digital version. This required thinking outside the box and utilizing the most current features CSS has to offer.
Full screen images with text and quote overlays. Entirely CSS created circle textbox.
Vertical text elements and fully responsive two column layout.
Full width images inline with content.
Custom sections with SVG background elements.
