These are the slides from my presentation at the Od „Ala Ma Kota” Do E-Matury conference in Warsaw, on 18 April 2012. The talks were 16 minutes long, so this is a fairly condensed deck. As always, my slides are starting points for each idea; there’s about a minute’s worth of elaboration for the key ones. I’ve been asked to write the talk up, and I’ll link to that when it goes public.
“It’s typography, Jim, but not as we know it…”
Six observations, four challenges, one conclusion, and five predictions…
ObservationsPeople run out of time faster than they run out of optionsThere’s no such thing as “new media”, only new usersInternationalisation and geography matterThe permanent and ephemeral are reversedMaterials become preciousThe market does not wait for teachers to write lesson plansPhysical properties are no help in predicting potential usesChallenges for designersSupport for text and typography is not Good EnoughSupport for text and typography is not Good EnoughTypographers lose the reassurance of familiar, visible, tactile structures(A conventional structure is defined by spreads and sequence in the bound object)(An e-publication’s structure relies on content sections…)(…which are not differentiated without reference to external navigation)(…and therefore rely on the root-level navigation for the publication to explain itself)We lack great models for integrating inline and immersive contentTexts are becoming nodes in networks, but typography has been volume-bound (A single of the sections we identified has four aspects that traditional typography has no solution for:) (links within the text to other texts,)(annotations by the user,)(annotations by other users,)(and links within the annotations.)(Developments in literature, which is easy to parse, show some ways forward) (uncovering meaningful connections in the text)ConclusionThis emerging typography is traditional at the paragraph level, and potentially innovative at the semantic level Predictions Three to five years of conservative solutions: just ‘digital books’Local interfaces will adopt traditional solutionsPersonal aggregators will threaten traditional authorship modelsKnowledge platforms will push beyond ‘digital books’ when trust systems matureAuthors, publishers, and students will continue to adapt much faster than teachers (and schools, and education authorities)Thank you
