CHAPTER EIGHT

DESIGNING THE READING FLOW (THE UX OF THE BOOK)

DESIGNING THE READING FLOW (THE UX OF THE BOOK)

W

e designed the book using the "reading flow" method, by describing use case scenarios. It may seem odd, like, what do you need a method for? It’s a book! You take it and read it. But that’s not really true. Coffee table books are not simply “read” - people flick through them, look at the images, read different parts, look for something and so on.


Our book has a variety of “flows”: you can open the book from the end, find a town or village in the index and look at the photo on the corresponding page. You can also just flip through the book and look at all the photographs in order. You can look at the photos as though you are in a museum, sometimes leaning in to read the captions - what the photo is of, where it was taken. You can read only the quotes or immerse yourself in the stories.

First drafts in inDesign, 2022

Step 1. We open the book. A black pastedown and a blank black spread

Step 2. We flip the page. A map of the world with Belarus highlighted across the whole spread (the map hasn’t been made here yet - denoted in words)

Step 3. We flip the page. Book title and information

Step 4. Book contents with a map of Belarus and the modules. There are page numbers of the book on each module

5. We enter into the first module of the grid. The module has a name, for example, “Miori”.

Step 6. We open up the first chapter: behold the beauty

The index at the end of the book to find photos of a specific geographical location.

In the book “Magnum Photos” I saw a technique of displaying raw, unprocessed photos from which the photographers then chose beautiful ones. This became the reference for our photography mosaics - the spreads that display our travel photos taken from our phones.

Magnum Contact Sheets

Magnum Contact Sheets

Magnum Contact Sheets

One of the ‘mosaics’ at the end of the book

Development of the ‘mosaic’:

Determining the size of the photo based on the number of photos per sheet

Collecting photos in proportion to the sheet in Figma

The first spread

The second one

Ready!

From Instagram

An easter egg: the word “KUT” on a license plate

It seemed like putting this mosaic together would be the hardest part of creating it, but no.


We thought that we would print all these photos without any edits, so that it would be interesting to view the originals. However, when we printed the pilot version, we realised that half the photos were too dark and looked like black squares, while the other half were too light and looked like white squares.

Exposure correction and colour correction of the mosaic photos (40,000x video speed)

There are eight mosaics in the book that feature behind-the-scenes footage. They are spread out among the chapters, along the text. On these spreads, apart from the photos, there are hidden QR codes that take you to the behind-the-scenes videos on YouTube and Instagram.

Developing the behind-the-scenes mosaics

Developing the behind-the-scenes mosaics

Developing the behind-the-scenes mosaics

Some other little things…

A merchandise concept (unused)

An idea to make QR codes for all the photos (Slava, not used)

A puzzle

A design option for th QR codes (Slava, stockimg.ai)

A design option for th QR codes (Slava, stockimg.ai)

contents

CONTENTS