Ready Player One Audiobook Rework
Re-Imagining For An Immersive Experience
I was given the task of reworking an audiobook and seen as I’m a comic reading person, I found it difficult to choose from the small collection of books I’ve read; It shouldn’t have been difficult, I know. Luckily there is a book that caters to all my pop-culture knowledge and got me excited with thinking about redesigning cover art and other elements. That book was “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. With reworking the audiobook, it wasn’t a matter of just replacing the files with a new cover. I wanted to change the experience and make a new edition with a familiar and inviting look.
Planning
To start the process, I made a table for the chapter headings and the metadata of the book. This included elements such as the author’s name, the release date, the genre, the narrator etc. Once I had this data compiled, I typed up a few different ways to display the chapter headings. The headings included simple variations such as “chapter 1” or “Ch. 1” as well as more complicated chapter headings such as roman numerals “VI” and even references to the book.
One outline showed the book split into parts and each part was labeled to the state/area that the book was happening in or near. In the end I chose to finalize the chapter with a simple “Ch. 1” because the abbreviated word allows the user to quickly check the chapter number.
I considered breaking the book up into smaller parts as there are 39 chapters which made for a lengthy list. Making the book into sections also gave way to the possibility of named chapters such as the ones shown above. Overall I ended up deciding to break the book up into eight parts. I did this as it created an even number of parts that were all about 1–2 hours in length. I decided the length of each part would be able to immerse the listener but also give good break points throughout the book.
Cover Art
This area of the redesign is what helped influence my choice when choosing the audiobook. I had several ideas of how to adopt the nostalgic 80’s and video game styles into the cover art and how to pay homages to iconic pop culture icons and styles from the 80’s era.
The top left cover, I decided to do an all out 80’s cyber-punk, digital VR style using gradients and neon text that backed onto a binary sunset of a digital world. I felt like this one created a sense of the VR portion of the book but was overall too busy and a little too bright. The top right cover, I based on the “TRON” movie poster and instead of a light disc above the hero, I had the 3 challenge keys floating above the character. While I liked this option, I felt like it wasn’t three dimensional enough and simply sat flat on the page.
The bottom left cover I based off of the first edition book art and went for a more simplistic and minimalist look. While it is a bright red cover that could draw the eye and inform the view of the content quick, I felt like it lacked an experience for the viewer and was very dry. The final, bottom right cover is another version of the final design I chose, except I changed the art inside the box. I liked this version but I thought the image lacked the retro painted look that can be seen in movie posters and game from that era.
For the final design of the cover art, I made it to look like an old retro Atari game case, mainly the asteroids game. I decided on this cover because it speaks to the nostalgic crowd who will recognize the design and homage but it was also bright with red, white, yellow and had a large image to draw new readers in.
In designing the cover, I also wanted to make sure the title of the book and the author name were the largest objects on the page so that the reader knew what book they were reading and who wrote it. I felt like narrator was irrelevant for the front cover and decided to use the extra space for more “easter egg” design choices.
Chapter Art
The chapter art was difficult with it being 39 chapters. I originally planned to create cover art for all chapters but I thought the art would become monotonous and that I wouldn’t be able to find enough design material for 39 chapters. I entertained the idea of doing a progressing cover art of a video game character moving along, but again, it presented a challenge that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish in time. As stated previously, I broke the book into eight parts to make it more of a digestible experience. With splitting the book into eight parts, I created art for each of the parts using the front cover template. With the template I switched out the main image to include a different image for each part.
As I didn’t have much 80’s, retro, VR artwork to design with, I decided to use the character posters from the Ready Player One movie. I wondered if showing the movie characters might detract the reader from imagining the characters themselves, but I felt like it would actually do the opposite and help with immersing the listener into the story and help with visuals.
Exporting
To export all elements of the re-design, I used the mac program “audiobook builder” to combine the audio files, add artwork and edit the some of the metadata. The program was easy to use and helped with envisioning the audiobook further as I brought together the parts and added cover art.
After exporting from audiobook builder, I used I-Tunes to further edit the metadata so that when the audiobook was played it would correctly display information such as the name of the book, author, narrator and even a small description of the book.
In the metadata I chose to put the narrator’s name “Will Wheaton” in the author area as this shows smaller than the album artist field. Entering the authors name “Ernest Cline” into the album artist field meant that the main name under the title of the book is the author.
Testing
To test the audiobook output, I used 3 platforms to see how the audiobook would react on common devices where they are used. The first test scenario was the obvious choice, an Apple I-phone (model 6). I chose this for the first choice as I used apple applications and devices to re-create the audiobook.
The Iphone was by far the best experience as it worked exactly as I had planned it when compiling and exporting it. Its no surprise that the IOS platform worked the best because it was created using an IOS application. As stated, the audiobook played beautifully and adhered to the “bookmark” features and also showed the cover art for each part of the book that I created. The audiobook app for Iphone works great for displaying the cover art in a size that it clear and that the user can enjoy. The only downside I found with the IOS platform was that sometimes the individual cover art wouldn’t load upon re-opening the book, for example the image for part five (See middle below) has specific cover art but when exiting and going back into the book later, I found that the cover art remained on the main cover art (See below right) until I changed the chapter. This may be a bug or my device that causes the issue but It was a factor that slightly derailed the intended experience and that I noted for further testing.
The second platform I tested on was a Samsung Tab with an android operating system. In this test case, the audio book failed to load properly using the device’s media player and would only display some of the metadata and the cover art. Although it displayed the cover art and metadata it wasn’t able to redeem itself as the cover art was enlarged by the google play app to where the area’s of the cover art were cut off. The enlargement was beneficial as it made the title of the cover art the most large and visible part but overall it was a disappointing test case that would need reworking and more testing.
The final test scenario I completed using a car audio system that had a touch screen and the ability to connect a phone through USB which in turn allowed the user to bring up the audio book app. Like the IOS device, this test scenario may be in favor of the audio book as the car supported Apple car play which is designed specifically for I-phones. The interface was easy to use and the experience of the audio book was satisfactory in terms of the cover art and metadata. The cover art for the most part was shown fairly clearly but the interface didn’t really seem to favor it as much as the phone. As seen in the images below, the cover art is faded into the background behind the metadata and the player also didn’t show the individual cover art as seen in the comparison in the bottom left. Overall the experience was good and the cover art was visible but I was disappointed that it didn’t behave the same as the I-phone test. I attempted one final test with the car and that was to connect it through bluetooth (see bottom right image) rather than a USB cable. This final test was a step down from the USB cable method as it didn’t list the book title and did not display the cover art.
Game Over
From building, exporting and testing this audiobook, it seems safe to say that IOS is the best platform for audiobooks but when I consider the testing phase, I think that android and other formats and operating systems will always be at a disadvantage due to the program being IOS based. If the audio book was built on a PC application, I wonder if it would be a more tailored android experience. Once again, IOS reigns as highest scoring player in the audiobook field and the best way to intake all of the metadata and cover art is through a portable device such as an Iphone.
Disclaimer: copyrighted elements are being used under fair use as documentation is covering an education assigned project.
