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Herbarium
Art and
Editorial Design | Electronic Publication | Curation
Our Brief
Our Client
Unlikely
The Exhibition
For this project, we have been tasked with reinterpreting the exhibition catalogue as an electronic publication— exploring the various multi-media functionalities that eBooks offer (and any you may feel compelled to invent).
Our client is a Melbourne-based independent publisher called ‘Unlikely’. The publisher has requested that the finished file size of your completed publication be kept in mind for the sake of accessibility and energy efficiency (reducing Co2 emissions). And that, in contrast to the pre-existing printed version of this exhibition catalogue, this eBook version should be a more complete representation of the exhibition it is about.
Unlikely eBooks constitute a series of thematic publications focussing on creative arts. Each eBook contains peer-reviewed contributions, often supplemented by associated articles and various materials. Unlikely eBooks are delivered in “compact and mobile formats”, which are suitable for offline viewing on a PC or mobile using ePubs and PDF files keeping file sizes in mind. Unlikely eBooks are open-access publications.
This exhibition is a unique collaboration between artists and science that investigates how the arts and sciences can enliven each other in unexpected ways. Through its form, practice, and reflection Art & Herbarium shows how modes of scientific knowledge and of creative practice continue to be intertwined in this most challenging of centuries.
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To test the limits of the book as a format and expand on the potential ectronic publishing allows.
My main strategy for the electronic catalogue is to create a mobile version, epub files with interactive elements that can run on Apple Books and Google Play Books. Most digital publications nowadays are focusing on a web format or iPad format, which causes mobile versions not fully compatible. On the other hand, most ePublication on Apple Books and Google Play Books are plain text or PDF files, it is hard to find a well-designed mobile format ePublication.
Why focus on the mobile version?
According to research, 3.2 billion people in the world own a smartphone in 2019, which is way more than people who own a tablet or a personal computer. I believe Mobile format ePublication occupies a large market share, and as a designer, I think we should pay more attention to mobile format eBooks, not making mobile format an option or a bonus.
What's more?
This epub design can possibly become a template that can be adopted in other exhibition catalogues in the future as it is editable in Adobe Indesign.
And most importantly, it can directly publish in Apple Books and Google Play Books, so it is good to go once the epub finished.
Colours
I decided to work with black and white on this electronic catalogue to follow the style guide from their existed printed version and most importantly, most of the artwork in this exhibition is either black and white or with a light colour, I want to keep the design clean, simple and able to stand out the artwork instead of my design.
elements
root
leaf/petal
flower
seed/flower
Graphic Pattern
I also design an animated graphic pattern for this electronic catalogue, we can interpret this image in many ways. First, I would like to point out the unique shape which derives from a square. Each direction of this shape has a graphical pattern that can create objects flexibly. Images from these patterns can be a leaf, flowers, seed, and roots. I also create a fade-in animation on this graphic pattern, it symbolizes the process of studying and analysing plants, and the fade-in image also represents new discovery.
List of Works
On the top of each page, I have added a page number and a menu icon that will jump into the ‘list of work page’, so users can jump into different works quickly. All Hyperlinks are easily recognized as they are blue.
POEM
A fly in from bottom animation has been used to create a sense of float and settle that the writer wanted. I also hide the footnote, so the user can be more focused on the poem itself.
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