Piffey

There is a tendency among book lovers to shun the growing embrace of digital readers, a feeling that no device can replace that feeling that a printed text produces — that almost sensual sentiment toward paper. In this way many classicists find the holding of the leaves just as important as the interpretation of them. At least that is the sentiment most relayed when asking book lovers about the future of printed materials and whether or not they’d ever purchase a digital reader. Perhaps, however, that cold digital feel that bibliophiles reject isn’t so much the device, but the way that content is rendered on it.

To define this reading experience we have to first look at books where the medium is part of the pleasure and books where the medium is pointless. Craig Mod, an ex-book designer, recently published a post on his site titled “Books in the Age of the iPad” and talks about the future of book production. For a long time we have been creating throwaway, disposable books — books “printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity.” This form factor is one that Mod argues can be replaced with digital readers without consequence since with the disappearance of the physicality of the book also comes the removal of the distribution and publishing systems that are such a toll on natural resources and the environment. These books are what he calls Formless Content.

When it comes to the other end of the spectrum Mod says that the book that generates an experience for the reader is Definite Content, something thought out and generated expressly for furthering the interpretation of the content. If you examine the traditional book there is a two-page spread. Factors such as font, page layout, and any other defining characteristics can affect the speed at which you reader or the way the book is digested. This canvas is the one we have grown used to and it seems to work well for dispersing information to a human reader.

Up until now the digital medium has tried new form factors where text was mutilated, compressed, or otherwise uncomfortable to digest. Then came e-Ink technology and the digital readers that presented text in a form a little bit closer to our comfortable two-page spread, but still unable to cater to this Definite Content defined earlier. Now comes the iPad and all the tablets that will follow, devices that Mod argues change the experience formula entirely. These tablets provide a canvas large enough to display Definite Content and are versatile enough that layouts can be arranged to emulate if not replace traditional reading experiences.

As a designer, Mod brings up the possibility of tablet devices to revolutionize content consumption if we can break out two-page habit. A digital device allows us the break the physical boundaries of the object and reach past them with infinite content planes or large-scale documents that can be sifted through just like paper on the screen. The digital device lowers the cost of modifying the content to reader relationship or as Mod puts it the “modes of conversation” that have been the norm in books for so long. Fluid planes with infinite content and pages arranged in a way that shakes the readers interaction with the book changes and upsets many interpretive modes and reader comforts. These digital devices give content producers a whole new set of tools.

Like any good bibliophile though, Mod doesn’t forget the physical print book and instead calls for people to embrace the physical limitations of traditional publishing methods and to make books then that are built to last, generate the nostalgia that will sell them, and remind people of the book as a sculpture and not just as formless content.

With devices that can emulate and expand upon our habitual and comfortable reading habits while at the same time producing an augmented experience there should be no reason for even the classical reader to feel disdain for the digital medium. Instead of lamenting the death of an outdated medium we should instead embrace the prospect of a new content canvas that can be manipulated into something more expressive than any medium of distribution used before. We are on the cusp of discovering new ways to tell and converse with stories.