Coldplay, From the Beginning
How we used Ibooks Author to create an immersive experience for Coldplay fans to enjoy.
For this project I was placed on a team with two other partners, we were tasked with creating an immersive Ibook about whatever subject we wanted. After some discussion, and bouncing ideas back and forth, we settled on Coldplay. My partner, Kyle Casey is a huge fan, and easily convinced us they would be a perfect subject to base our ibook around.
We all began by looking at different sites for inspiration, and coming up with the general content we wanted to include, then separately sketched out our ideas. Once we had everything sketched out separately, we combined the best ideas and concepts to create the blueprint for our layout designs.
We then decided who we wanted to target as our audience — Coldplay fans: diehards and those newly introduced. And what we wanted this book to do for them — Create a fun, immersive experience for them to enjoy. From there we decided to split the work, I would be working on the Members section of the book, Kyle working on the Eras section, and Bryan working on the introduction media, and the documentation for the project.
As a group we didn’t have very many problems, I know there were a few hold ups here and there, which we were able to work on together if needed, but most of the time we were able to figure out solutions by ourselves. On my part, things went mostly according to plan.
I began the process by searching for good assets to use in the book. It took some searching to find the right photos of the entire band, and each individual member that had a consistent theme. But when I found the right photos everything came together. I was able to insert background information on each member that I found on the internet, or that Kyle already knew off the top of his head.
Over the course of the project, I did stray from our original design ideas. I had originally wanted to include some Hype content, that would allow users to click on a gallery that would open up to different videos, or photos. But after a little experimenting it became obvious that idea wasn’t going to work out. There was just too much that could go wrong, and the program wouldn’t allow me to set up the layout like I had intended. I could tell that it was going to be more work than it was worth. So I decided to drop that whole concept, and insert video clips instead.
This was a small challenge within itself because finding good quality videos for each member turned out to be more difficult than I had planned. I wanted to include interviews with each band members, so that the audience could get to know them on a deeper level. But trying to find separate interviews that were consistent with each other was hard. With Kyle’s guidance I found interviews from when they released their Mylo Xyloto album, that were all consistent and related to the same thing. The only problem was that their highest quality was only 480p. Because a lot of their content is older (these interviews were released in 2012) they aren’t in as good of quality as we would have wished. I know my partner Bryan, who was creating the introduction video ran into this same problem. I decided to use those interviews anyways, it was better to have consistent media, than a higher quality. Sacrifices had to be made.
I was very happy with how clean my design turned out, I was able to get the band members information out there in an exciting way — the user can read, listen and watch, as they get to know the band members. I also included links to the band’s social media platforms so readers could check those out as well.
Kyle’s section of the book includes seamless, two page layouts that reflect each albums artwork, written information, a video highlight, and every song in that album. To really allow the user a fully immersive experience, they have a wide variety of things they can manipulate and control while they learn about each era. Kyle and I worked hard to make sure that both of our sections flowed together and had the same style to create a cohesive book and experience for the readers.
As we completed our sections of the book, our third partner Bryan was working hard to create the video introduction that opened up the entire book, and set the mood for the rest of the experience. He did a wonderful job of creating a video that highlighted the feelings Coldplay brought to their listeners, and something that was visually appealing and engaging.
Bryan also created a beautiful and interactive way to display our documentation, that went along with the theme of the book. He used photos from the Mylo Xyloto comics as background images, and song titles as different headers to explain the media.
We came together as a team to create a cover for the book, bouncing around a few ideas, we wanted something that would capture the reader from the beginning, while highlighting the band’s symbolism and artwork. We started off with one that had a photo of the band members together, with the Coldplay logo at the bottom, but after some last minute inspiration, decided to go for a minimalistic design that we felt matched better with our over all theme.
I was excited to put everything together and work out the kinks to finally see the final product in action. After working together and separately to finish the book, I am very proud of our designs, and interactive elements. We are still working on how to put it out for more people to see and engage with, but we hope to eventually get it to someone associated with the band, or allow for Coldplay fans to enjoy it was well.
