% E-Books With an Attitude -- A pamphlet
% Femke Snelting, Alexandre Leray

[TOC]

## Introduction

> The format is intended as a single format that publishers and conversion
> houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale.
>
> -- From the ePub definition

Books are no longer individually designed paper objects. In an environment of
federated publishing, they are published in different formats such as ePubs
--the official standard for digital books-- but also as HTML pages and PDF
documents. Books are read in e-readers as well as in web browsers; printed at
home or delivered as discrete files that require their own software for
rendering. The ontological stability of books is cut across myriad standards,
formats and devices. In addition to being embodied in different hardware and
software platforms, books are also edited in discontinuous ways where source
material and modifications may come from different places, at different
moments. The book is now a fractious environment and invites new questions of
first locating design amid such disjointed ecologies, but also to think about
what opportunities for design open up when the final output is no longer a
stable object.

<!-- official standard ? -->


This assemblage view of book design contrasts with extant understandings of
design and the subsequent division of labor in design work. In current
understandings of ebookmaking, we find a grossly simplified division where on one hand publishing
entrepreneurs, device makers, and "users" (formerly known as "readers") are actively involved in selling, buying, developing and consuming technology, and on the other designers are busy with print. In this configuration, the designer turns into a caricature of a nostalgic being, always longing for a time when books were still uniquely shaped
single-master artefacts. Designers by this caricature are always desirious of pixel perfect specifities if not of cold glue binding and the smell of fresh ink on woven paper.

Federated  publishing is a reality. Strangely, the way designers (can) work
seems more formatted than ever, and we believe the technical infrastructure
that we see emerging, is part of this problem. How can we make the fact that design is embedded in chains of
dependencies into an asset? How can we prevent design and artistic practices
from being split apart from other realities? How can we rethink design as part of a collective of algorithms, standards and tools?

## The ePub standard

> We invite representatives from following communities to submit papers:
> Publishers digital books production (including magazines and journals),
> Retailer/Bookshops (on line and off line), Manufacturers of eBooks readers
> devices, Providers of eBooks readers applications software, Providers of
> eBooks authoring tools, eBook related software contributors to browser cores,
> Distributors (eBook server), News agencies, Libraries, Search engines ,
> Specialized search and web analytics, Library management software companies,
> Relevant standard setting institutions, eBooks service providers, Cloud-based
> eReading platform providers, Accessibility companies and institutions,
> Localization companies, Consumers, Academic researchers in digital
> publishing, Industry consultants
> 
> -- [eBooks: Great Expectations for Web Standards](http://www.w3.org/2012/08/electronic-books/expected.html)

Around the table at a meeting of the International Digital Publishing forum, we can find several representatives discussing the state of the ePub format. Publishers want to speed up bookproduction by interactively connecting stock management to content delivery in an overall effort to create reliable reflowable output across myriad devices and platforms. Eager device vendors are trying to be just compatible enough to cut off their competition. While disability rights groups pressure for accessible content. At the same table, [leading global type providers promise great reading experiences](http://idpf.org/epub/30/wg-charter). There are no bookdesigners at this table.

Today's largest effort in defining a common technical infrasture for digital books has cristalized
in the ePub format. While it is still limited in terms of design possibilities, it's development and rapid adoption is encouraged by the historical success of HTML and driven by the rapid adoption of and popular excitement around HTML5 and CSS3.

Open Standards like the ePub format are importants to us on many levels.
Without wanting to deny the various forms of power play that can take place, 
Open Standards favor a read/write culture by exposing its own construction. 
Rather than being fixed in stone, they are continuously refined
through practice and feedback. This is usually done with a concern for 
continuity, helping to extend the lifespan of digital objects and avoiding
programmed obsolescence. Open Standards also help preventing depency on a
single company (hardware, marketing, authoring tool), that would define the
format after its own political agenda and commercial interests. Open Standards create the building blocks for a rich ecology of practices, and in doing so build paths between practitioners, devices, workflows and software.

The ePub standard offers potentially a platform for the many different actors involved in the creation of digital books and allows them to acknowledge interrelated concerns at the various stages of the life of a book: writing, designing, distribution, reading etc. Unfortunately, the stakeholders involved so far have merely been actors on the level of infrastructure. It is a first clue that the ePub view on digital book production is rather narrow.

## High Fidelity

> Think about how challenging that is. As I mentioned in a meeting recently,
> it’s like trying to create a totally immersive, 3D movie and have the same
> product gracefully degrade for playback on an AM radio station.
> 
> -- Joe Wikert, [Graceful eBook Degradation](http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/08/graceful-ebook-degradation.html)

In discussions about finding a workable standard for e-books, the concept of "graceful degradation" has taken center stage. It is the idea that a system can continue to function in the event of the failure of one or more components. This principle is contrasted with "naive" systems that are designed in such a way that they would break down if only a single condition would not be met. Take for example how a text if necessary can still be shown in a default font while it was designed with a bespoke typography. Images can be displayed in full-color on devices that support it, and shown in black and white on those with one-bit output, or simply omitted altogether. The designer designs for the optimal situation of having all features at her disposal, and tries to anticipate what would happen on "less capable" devices.

Following the logic of graceful degradation, a lack of color can only be seen as a fault, as an absence. However the distinct graphic character of line-art is also a quality. The display of a "book" on a color device, that was originally designed for a one-bit screen can actually be considered a significant reduction, a form of "graceless optimization" when qualities of design are conflated with high fidelity, and technical complexity is seen as top end. An all too linear approach to degradation aligns with what vendors want from hardware: more is better, and larger is greater. 

Current standards such as ePub and other flavors of XML tell a story through their particular idea of optimization. Standards and file formats for this type of books are mainly developed and pushed for and by industry, for whom the idea of optimal is rather 'economic'.  As a result, the range of design options is quickly limited to the lowest common denominator: one-column text layouts without possibility to think about the relation between page size and resolution, margins, the amount of text per page etc. In the development of the ePub standard certain aspects such as metadata and fluidity of the distribution accross devices were prioritized. Omitting the most basic elements of bookdesign reflects a technocratic rather than a cultural approach to "books". It subsequently forces that same approach onto ideas of authorship, distribution and ultimately onto designers' tools and practices.

## Form, content and situation

> We want to dispel the myth that digital books can't also be crafted works of
> visual design. Just as web design has evolved and matured, so too will ebooks,
> and book designers have a new medium available in which to express their
> creativity.
> 
> – [http://epubzengarden.com/about](http://epubzengarden.com/about/)

Just like XHTML and CSS, the e-pub standard operates from the assumption that for creating a digital book, a separation of "content" and "styling" is necessary. The division of "semantics" from "presentation" has useful implications: it allows for instance for the reuse of styles across multiple pages and to refine a design in one go. But It is also problematic in the sense that it tends to divide labor and formats tasks, ultimately leading to conceptions of design and authorship as independent of their material context.

Fortunately, in current practices of webdesign, designers are no longer confined to Photoshop mockups but actively engage with writing HTML, CSS and Javascript code themselves. They are hacking their way across the divide between content from style, while engaging with technological infrastructures. This shows that designers do find ways to circumvent this unfortunate separation. It suggests that other approaches to electronic bookdesign might be possible.

Paul Rand once said "Design is the synthesis of form and content" [1] and "A work of art is realized when form and content are indistinguishable" [2]. From Peter Behrens [3] to Jan van Toorn [4], a century of design achievement shows that content and form can not that easily be isolated from each others, and that separating them as a principle deprives objects from a substantial relation. But Rand, Behrens and van Toorn where not just working on form and content, they were thinking about their designs with specific reading situations in mind, carefully making choices about paper, bindings or inks; experimenting with specific printing reproduction technologies. They were thinking in terms of design objects, bearing in mind how those would be handed over to the reader. From Gutenberg onwards, it is obvious how books have always been thought beyond content and form. They are embedded in a technological and economical context that in turn has an effect on forms and content possible.

With the event of digital books, these entanglements have become even more apparent, and urgently necessitate a different paradigm when imagining the agencies of standards, practices and tools. From a sequence of bound printed sheets to electronic devices, digital books have turned into "book systems". Their *Gestalt* which was before achieved by having a full picture of the affordances offered by the printing press, is now depending on a variety of parameters determined by the formats (what is encoded and how?), the software (how is the data instantiated?), the devices (what are the specifications of the machine?) and even by the way the book is distributed.

Emerging webtechnologies actually start to hint at the fact that much more intelligent ideas of relations between form and device, or actually between form, situation and content, are possible and desirable. Even more important, designers are actively involved in developing work in this area. CSS media queries[^media-queries] are a first step in this direction, but they are mainly used for "responsive design", an approach to cross-platform design that aims to offer the same experience on different devices.

[^media-queries]:  Media queries is a technology that allows to detect some basic specificities of devices such as the screen size of the device orientation, and apply specific CSS accordingly.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/CSS/Media_queries](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/CSS/Media_queries)

Instead we are interested in "situational design"[^contextual-design]. We do not want to anihilate differences but rather work with them. We want a practice that is not only aware of the context in which it exists, but actively engages with it. It takes advantage of the affordances of specific situations, rather than trying to create a seamless experience. We are looking for intelligent lay-out systems where designers can collaborate with algorithms and devices, and play with the materialities of variable book systems. It would mean to consider templates and stylesheets not as strict normative containers but as situations that generate parameters for attraction and repulsion between the components of a design. They could take into account many parameters that are currently ignored, including connectivity, localization, battery level and so on. Rather than trying to control the flow of content, designers could find ways to dialog with the various actors at work. Learning to love their idiosyncracies and their attitudes.

[^contextual-design]: We decided to use the term "situational" because "contextual design" is being used for a type of design we are actually trying to avoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_design

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51z-t7T0_6E
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yOjts0tpco
[3]: http://www.design-is-fine.org/post/44774560571/peter-behrens-product-sheet-for-aeg-kettle
[4]: https://vimeo.com/3775270

## Books with an attitude

> Garson O'Toole says:        
> March 23, 2009 at 6:09 pm        
> 
> IMHO a fully successful ebook format should be integrated with the rest of the
> web. For example, major browsers like Firefox should be able to read it.
> [...] Links between ebooks and links in and out of ebooks should be
> supported. It would be wonderful if you could specify a link in an ebook or
> webpage that would take you to a precisely specified word sequence within
> another ebook. Links like this would allow the incorporation of ebooks into
> the general conversational structures of the web.
>
> -- http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/why-not-use-html-instead-of-epub/

To imagine the future of e-pub away from the desire for coherence and pixel-
perfectness is based on our understanding that in bookpublishing design,
processes of production, authoring and distribution are deeply intertwingled, interlaced
practices. What then could an ebook that engages with content at
all levels,and celebrates the various attitudes?

For designers of books the territory of work has moved far away from the
layout of a single, specific output to the design of book systems that can in
turn produce multiple outputs/formats. Potentially, designers could become
participants in a more complex but interesting situation where they need to
negotiate media technology with a larger set of actors. The form of the book
would actively be defined through an amalgamate of processes happening at
different moment and places in the process of making it, and not just be the
unmutable result of historical events.

We call for e-books with an attitude!



An e-book with an attitude:

- opens up its own internal processes, tools, sources;
- has a sense of context, it considers itself as part of a whole
  chain/ecology of practices;
- aims to put reading and writing at the same level, or at least experiments
  with non-conventional divisions of roles;
- plays with reading and writing of both text and code; treats technical
  content as part of a reading and writing experience;
- is networked and/or mutable;
- works with specific characteristics of specific devices/reading contexts,
  taking advantage of intrinsic qualities




  ==========



Ultimately, the concept of "graceful degradation" means separating form and
content as a principle to be able to split the container from the content and
make form into style. 

HOW IN RELATION TO ABOVE: alienating design from technical materiality.

The hierarchies that are built into "fault tolerant" standards/fileformats for cross-media publishing. xxxx

In a time when the current format of Epub does not even start to compare with the
possibilities offered by browsers 10 years ago, CSS Zen Garden remains
inspirational in the context of Epub. INTRODUCE CONTEXT CSS Zen Garden has indeed been a major
milestone in the adoption of HTML by designers by showcasing the benefits of
browser compliance to open standards as well as the flexibility of CSS. But It
has also lead to a reduction of design as mere styling. Although a traditional
print designer would arrange text, images and other symbols in relation to each
other to create meaning, the approach advocated by CSS Zen Garden tends to
confine the designer to cosmetic interventions.


 Only very rarely does our
practice reflect the rich intermingling between form, content and context that
opens up. 

There is a clear relation EXPLAIN between a well supported standard and space for
design that we might recognize from the situation in 2000, when browsers would
each render webpages at will. Designers understood that a commitment to
webstandards would allow them to be less dependent on browsers.