About content containers: For centuries the book form was unquestionably the most efficient way to package and distribute written and illustrated works. It’s seems like such a basic object, but it’s actually pretty ingenious when you consider the other options that were available—can you imagine trying to read War and Peace in scroll form?! When you take the romance out of it, viewing the book as a content container seems intuitive. In its most basic state, it is simply a means of packaging and delivering content—and no longer guaranteed to be the best means of doing so.

It’s easy to romanticize books (even the blah-looking ones) if you’ve spent your life loving them and making them. It’s also easy to fall into a print vs. digital mindset (“Save the book! Save the book!”) But the reality is that both formats—print and digital—are valid and enjoyable. Readers have a choice. And so do Publishers. If we’ve chosen to place content in a book rather than an e-reader or tablet (ahem, along with the budget required to do it well ☺), how do we turn that book into an object of desire for the consumer? How do we romanticize it for a new population of readers?

To achieve this, I believe the container itself—not just the content—needs to emotionally embrace the reader. This is where books can top e-readers and tablets. This is where design rules! My ah-ha moment came kind of randomly in 2007 at the Metropolitan Museum’s “Barcelona and Modernity” show. I was totally captivated by an unassuming comparison of Josep Puig i Cadafalch’s “Casa Amatller”, and Antoni Gaudi’s “Casa Batllo”, shown side-by-side in photos. The explanation brilliantly analyzed the inspiration for both houses (the legend of “St. George and The Dragon”), and the differences in execution.

Casa Amatller’s exterior is decorated with detailed carvings showing scenes from St. George and The Dragon.

Casa Batllo, on the other hand, interprets the story conceptually; turning the tiled roof into the scaly back of a dragon, the chimney into the hilt of a sword driven into the dragon’s back, balconies into victims’ skulls, and it’s inner halls into a ribcage and twisting turning stomach.

I visited Casa Batllo in 2009, and felt the space around me first-hand. Rather than passively view scenes from a story at a distance, Casa Batllo’s design allows you to experience events from the story happening all around you. You really become part of the story.

The concept I took away from the Met’s exhibit—telling a story through surface decoration alone vs. infusing every physical element of your medium with it—can be directly translated to book design. There’s pure graphic design, or there’s a blend of graphic and physical design.

Some inspiring examples of books that achieve this blend of great graphic design and conceptual physical design follow (no doubt made possible by a strong and early collaboration between Design, Editorial, and Production Departments.)

1.The Invention of Hugo Cabret; Scholastic Press, designed by David Saylor, Charles Kreloff, and Brian Selznick. The book’s thickness and smallish trim size give it a pleasing bulk—making it feel like a secret box, waiting to be opened. The case design is reminiscent of an old movie screen—perfect for the theme of the story inside. Red head/foot bands and endpapers make you feel like you’re entering a movie theater, velvet seats and all! That feeling is continued through the interior with the elegant black frames on all of the spreads. Hugo’s storytelling really begins the moment you pick up the book. The concept that a story can be conveyed clearly through visual means is proven through the innovative transitioning between text, and black & white art inside the book.

2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: Quirk Books, designed by Doogie Horner, Production management by John J. McGurk (I love that Production got a shout out here!) This book feels so deliciously spooky! I haven’t even read it yet, but have a sense of what to expect thanks to the great design and production. The jacket looks to be printed with silver ink, reminiscent of an old daguerreotype. Under the jacket is a red case with the scratchy gold signature of “Alma LeFay Peregrine” (Miss Peregrine). So we know we’re going into her territory by opening the book. It’s almost like opening her front door! The flap copy tells us that the book is set in an abandoned orphanage. The dirty wallpaper-patterned endpapers create a sort of entryway, followed by a ‘decaying’ page of wallpaper and  a seriously creepy title page—like someone has just jumped out of a doorway into your path. The entire interior is littered with four color flourishes and old photos, enhancing the feeling of being contained within a crumbling old house. The only thing I miss is head and foot bands. The raw edge of the book block doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the design.

3. The Arrival: Arthur A. Levine Books, I can’t locate a design credit—perhaps the artist, Shaun Tan? Apart from the stunningly illustrated (and wordless) interior, this book makes smart use of a large trim size to convey the scope of a confusing new world, and an immigrant’s perception of this world. There’s some subtle debossing on the front cover, giving the book an album feel. Illustrated endpapers in the style of a passport photo collection start the viewer off with some perspective of the scale of newcomers arriving in this new world.

It was fun for me to try to reflect some of the inspiration I’ve drawn from these books, and from the Met’s show, in a Sterling/Splinter title I recently worked on—Tiger’s Curse. The story is dominated by romance, and fantasy elements. The main character journeys from America to India. The jacket is printed on metalized paper to create a shimmery, magical feel. The India-inspired arch is embossed on the jacket and case to encourage the feeling of passing through an architectural element into the world of the story. The endpaper map is printed with metallic ink to “begin” the journey of the story, and maintain the sense of magic created by the shimmery jacket. I also need to note that experimenting with different treatments for this book couldn’t have happened without an amazing Production Manager, and the support of the rest of the book’s in-house “team”.

Not every work lends itself to a physical design concept, but it’s certainly worth trying. If content doesn’t lend itself to physical design at all, it may be a better candidate for digital platforms.

Like buildings, hardcover books have structural elements that cannot be substantially altered. As book Designers we have a choice in how we treat those physical elements. We can decorate a book’s jacket with beautiful type designs and complimentary finishing effects that reflect the story and mood inside the book. With collaboration and support, we can also take our design concepts further and infuse every single physical part of the book with the story and mood, converting container into content. For the reader, it may just mean the difference between merely looking at a dragon carving, or passing through a dragon’s jaws to stand inside its belly.

More about the Met’s exhibit: http://www.metmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/listings/2007/barcelona-and-modernity/architecture-and-design

More about Casa Batllo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Batlló

More about Casa Amatller: http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/English/_3Ngb8YjSpL3IOAs7oO2GTYt1nCojK1e-e8SVYz2umxpZmfjZn8c2ue2iYg3xvrVIoc0lqslBfVvFSeWsC2pb65TQ_mIcseeVNiFyHB38cdQqXHhNhULzDg

I came across some fascinating moving photographs yesterday, coined as “Cinemagraphs”  in 2011 by their creators, Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. For me, they are a vivid example of how animation in an otherwise static image can help tell a story—not just complement it. Check out the images, and read the inspirationfeed.com blog post that brought them to my attention here: http://inspirationfeed.com/photography/35-beautifully-animated-photographs-a-k-a-cinemagraphs/

The photos by this creative team are artfully composed and beautifully colored. They arguably tell compelling stories through visual elements alone, but Beck and Burg have pushed further to include purposeful animations intended to enhance the narrative quality of each image.

Take a minute to scroll through all of the moving photos. Note which ones you pause over. A handful of them completely captivated me! I’m sure the creators had a specific concept in mind for each photo’s animation (showing the movement of a fabric may be really important for a fashion editorial), but to the casual observer, the animations can easily feel like add-ons, or gimmicks.  I often have this same thought when playing with children’s apps and enhanced e-books. As someone with limited experience in creating story apps and enhanced e-books, I again ask myself the question: what role can (or should) animation play in digital publishing for children?

Can an animated image help to tell a story—as intended in these Cinemagraphs—or does the movement distract from the story? How can my reaction to the Cinemagraph medium inform the work I do as a children’s book art director, designer, and illustrator?  Will understanding it help me to give constructive feedback when a portion of the illustrated content that comes across my desk is (inevitably) animated? Can it help me make better creative choices?

To make sense of my questions, I try to pinpoint what exactly captured me in the Cinemagraphs I responded to.

Image 1: This is so fabulous! A geometrically-composed, single-subject composition that initially distances itself from the viewer in several ways. We see the girl’s face in a mirror, rather than in “life”. We are blocked from entering the scene by her shoulder. And last, upon first viewing she is looking away from us. Then BOOM! All of those barriers are broken with the flick of her eye. She looks directly at the viewer and you are instantly connected to the subject.

Image 2: The lightest point in this image is the sunny stone facade of the building in the upper left corner, also the natural place for the eye to settle.  Muted greens and reds, and perspective lines drawn by the window, tables and awnings create a lovely composition. However, until the yellow reflection of a cab appears in the window, you all but ignore the lower right corner of the photo. The 3^rd color introduced by the cab would attract attention even if it were still, but the animation takes this attention further and guides the viewer’s eye from one end of the composition to the other.

Image 3: I love this! The bottom two thirds of the composition is dominated by striking color and light contrast, while the top third is primarily neutral tones and minimal contrast—until the simple bat of an eye. The pop of red eye shadow added by the central figure’s closed eyes instantly changes the composition from a linear top vs. bottom set up, into an angular triangle made of points of red.

Image 4: This photo is such a fun contradiction. Reality tells you that the crowd of bustling walkers in the foreground are moving, yet, the only figure actually moving in the scene is the sedate man on a bench in the background. What an elegant way to call attention to the most unassuming figure in an image.

So, where does this musing get me? Does animation have a valid place in a storyteller’s arsenal? I believe so.

Here’s how:

• Animation can be used to create or diminish intimacy. To alter a reader’s connection to a character, mid-scene. Turning a head, hunching a back, folding arms, looking away. These are all animated actions that either invite a reader to connect, or push them away.

• Animation can purposefully guide a viewer’s eye around an illustration. An intentional viewing progression can be created using one moving element.

• A living composition can be built using a single animation. An orderly, linear composition can change on a dime into an angular, tension-filled composition. The mood of a scene can be altered through a simple animation without changing any other fundamentals, such as color, lighting, a character’s facial expression, etc.

• Intentional focus can be placed on the smallest of details in a crowded scene using a simple animation. Even in the most chaotic of illustrated scenes, a slight movement will call attention.

I’m curious about what you think. Which Cinemagraphs caught your attention, and why? Looking ahead: Illustrators; how can you use animation to illustrate multiple ideas within one scene? Editors and Writers; can animation fill in the blanks between passages? Designers and Art Directors; where does your work fit in to all of this?