Prototypes

The prototype concept went through several evolutions. It originally began as a single foldout paper book, then a paper book with tessellated/sculptural pages, later turned into a collapsible box form and finally came back round to the idea of a single paper foldout, albeit with a more standardised unfolding structure. The main struggle was in trying to negotiate how the two narratives (the story book and the information spreads) would connect to each other in a way that allowed for the information relationships to be easily seen, but didn’t make for an overly unwieldy physical structure. The ongoing choice was between creating two separate books, or merging the two narratives into a single form. In the end, I decided against completely merging the two, because this would have necessitated certain pages in the story folding out to reveal the underlying information, thereby disrupting the flow of the fairy tale. And I was intent that people be able to read the story on its own if they wished. The physical prototypes: The diagram idea for the final structure. From "Paper Folding Templates for Print Design" by Trish Witowski

Navigation

The navigation for the project dealt with the visual system in place for connecting events from the story to the relevant spread. There were two sets of connections to be made: Connections from events in the story to the information spreads
In the early stages of the project, when I imagined the two narratives would be separate, I created a reference system whereby the relevant quote from the story would be repeated on the relevant info spread, along with a summary of what that spread was about, and a re-statement of any data/ facts on that particular section.

Over time, however, I realized that I wanted the connections to be more visible, so I came up with a colored line system whereby pull-quotes from the story (of relevant events) were set in a particular color. Lines of the same color would then connect to the relevant spread, which would have a tiny swatch in the page corner, of the chosen color. I preferred this sort of system, because it gave the viewer, at a glance, a sense of how connected and layered the subject matter was.

Connections between different information spreads (known as interlinks)
Based off the colored line system, it seemed to make sense to me to visually treat the interlinks in the same manner, that is to have the interlink lines zip over the spreads to connect sections of text in different areas. However, even though I muted out the color of the interlinks (down to a dull grey and later to a dull yellow) they turned into visual clutter, especially since they needed arrows to indicate the direction of the connection. On top of this, because of the fold outs within the information spreads, I had to re-calibrate the interlinks so that they made sense no matter which pages were unfolded/ open. The sheer number of interlinking lines, and the fact that they had to be crowded into the margins so as not to interrupt the body text, meant that they became very difficult to follow. During user testing, viewers tended to ignore them completely because they were visually intimidating. As a solution, I eliminated most of the interlinks by creating a symbol-based footnote system whereby any interlink would lead to the corner to the page where a colored symbol would indicate the relevant spread to jump to. The symbol would then be repeated on the destination page (in a different color scheme to indicate that this is an arrival point) and a line would lead off to the information in question. In short, the interlinks still existed, but no longer had to span across multiple pages, which eliminated much of the clutter.

Digital Layout

Screenshots showing the Indesign layout files used to assess alignment for the front and back of fully unfolded spiral. Examples of digital finals of sections of the fairy tale and the information spreads

Production