Mark Bain, who created our logo and website, and is already working on the covers for our first titles, is one of the founding members of the round. This shows how seriously we take design. We want our titles to be useful, inspiring and challenging – but also pleasurable, not always a quality associated with educational design!
We caught up with Mark, who’s been building an increasingly impressive portfolio within ELT, to get his views on design in the digital age – and to find out what’s behind his work for the round.
How did you get involved in the round?
I met Lindsay when I was doing the Diploma at Oxford TEFL in Barcelona, where he was a course tutor. Later, he asked me to work on a redesign of the home page of his blog, Six Things. During this project, he would hint mysteriously at a top secret project that he wanted me to work on.
Lindsay introduced me to his co-conspirator Luke at the TDSIG’s Unplugged event in May 2011, and, still basking in the buzz of that great experience, we sat down for a few beers to talk over the round project. Lindsay started off by explaining what PARSNIPS was. I was sold on the whole idea by P.
Do you think designers can play a more creative and prominent role in the digital age?
Design plays a central role nowadays. It’s a way of attracting more attention to your product, or service, or project, or cause, than it would get otherwise. I think the web has made designers all the more important. Now anyone can set up a functional and attractive website in a few minutes and have a presence on the web. And many people do. But how do you stand out from the crowd?
The goal posts have shifted. A great idea is vital, of course, but even great ideas can get lost amongst the competing voices. So good design can really help get you and what you are doing noticed. Before people process what you are doing intellectually, you can help them ‘get it’ emotionally through design.
What did you have in mind when developing a visual style for the round? Do you envisage different titles having a similar look – like a house style – or will they be more individual?
I don’t want to give too much away, but I can say that the titles which emerge from the round will be instantly recognisable because they won’t look like educational titles at all. So I guess you could say they will be similar in looking different.
I’ve tried to extend that to the website, too. There’s nothing too radical about the site, but some conventional approaches have been reconsidered.
Taking the menu as an example, I wanted to invoke the idea of a bookshelf and, at the same time, rethink the standard menu bar layout. When we browse a bookshelf, we are comfortable reading vertically, so why not on a website menu? Perhaps it’s actually easier to search for something this way.
For technical reasons, laying out a menu this way wasn’t really possible until recently (and still isn’t if you are viewing the site using Internet Explorer), so vertical text has always been rare on the web. But the environment has changed, and so designers can rethink the conventions.
If you look at the site on an iPhone or other small mobile device, the layout changes to adapt to the smaller screen size (non-mobile users can see the layout change by dragging the edge of their browser window to make it narrower). I think that reflects what the round is all about – reacting to a changing environment and seizing the opportunities it presents.
Do you think there is room for livelier design in educational publishing?
Because the market for educational materials is so broad, the big publishers are restricted in what they can do in terms of design. The design of a coursebook might have to appeal to, say, kids, but also to their teachers and their parents, and maybe even the educational authorities.
But small publishing projects need to create a buzz of excitement around what they are doing if they want to spread the word and get themselves noticed, because they don’t have the marketing apparatus of the big publishing houses.
If you offend no-one, you have to accept that you’re not going to excite anyone, either. There are going to be people who say ‘that’s not for me’, but that’s OK – because that means there will probably be others who love it, and these people will go out of their way to share their love.
You can see more of Mark’s work here.
I really love Mark Bain’s work and think that using vertical text in the menu bar to invoke the idea of a bookshelf is ingenious.
On my own (real) bookshelves I notice that books published in English-speaking countries have the vertical text running down, whereas books published in Germany have it running up. The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ practice strikes me as more logical because when the book lies flat with the cover facing upwards, the text on the spine is not upside-down, as is the case with my German books.
So what do publishers in other countries do, I wonder? With e-books, I guess it doesn’t really matter, but if Mark sets a new web standard for vertical type, will it run up or down? What do people find easier to read?
Hi Stephanie
I live in Spain, and the spine-text practice is the same as in Germany. I wonder if it’s a continental Europe thing?
Believe it or not, I never thought about how the text looks when the book is flat on a table, but you’re right — the British way is clearly superior (although I’m sure my Spanish wife will come up with a devastating counter-argument)!
Glad you like my work.
Hi Stephanie
I live in Spain, and the spine-text practice is the same as in Germany. I wonder if it’s a continental Europe thing?
Believe it or not, I never thought about how the text looks when the book is flat on a table, but you’re right — the British way is clearly superior (although I’m sure my Spanish wife will come up with a devastating counter-argument)!
Glad you like my work.