Digital Foundations

Here are some of the references we are looking at for Chapter design and page layout. We need it to stay somewhat standardized, in order to streamline the layout process (each page cannot be completely different – would take too long and would probably be disruptive to the flow of the chapters.)

We are working around a genre of software textbooks. They have instructions and screenshots. We will be adding better content, and additional visual references. But we will still have numbered steps and screenshots in part of the chapter. The best in class (design wise) is Adobe’s Classroom in a Book series:

We are particularly enamored of Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type, for its ability to mix teaching with history. And for showing over telling. She shows good design in the way the book is designed and laid out. Some of my favorite spreads are here (space and calmness at begging page, use of gutter as secondary information zone, symmetry and splitting the page up into quadrants, assymetry and splitting the page into quadrants):

Other points of reference are some of the layouts from Kimberly Elam’s Grid Systems

Also always relevant is Ellen Lupton and Abbot Miller’s, ABC of Bauhaus