When researching design preferences on ebooks, Chong, Lim, and Ling (2009) found readers of ebooks preferred to have consistent use of a readable font. Keeping this in mind, Karla and I explored many different font choices that represented the letter ‘a’ and ‘g’ that were similar to printed letters. Our first selection, Century Gothic, was not supported when the iBooks Author file was converted on the iPad. In the end, we selected the Futura font, as it was similar to written text, supported in iBooks, and easy to read. Although, the letter ‘q’ is missing the tail, many fonts that are used in teaching materials are missing the tail and I find that the students are able to compensate for this when they are told that it is a ‘q’.
It was also found that eBooks that presented a strong contrast between the font colour and background page colour proved to be more preferable. Karla and I decided to keep the main font content the colour black on a white background to provide a strong contrast. When planning the layout of the book, we decided that it we would have the activities for the students to complete highlighted with a different background colour. We thought this would allow the students to easily distinguish between the text material and activity sections. For the background colour, we chose a light blue that was easy to look at, provided a strong contrast with the black font colour, and matched the section heading colour for a consistent look.
Lastly, readers tended to prefer eBooks that had differing title and text colour to increase scannability and differentiation between chapters. We chose to make the headings blue in colour to contrast from the black text on the pages, but provided a good contrast against the white page background. We also increased the font size of the headings for easy scalability and made the main content font large enough so it would be easy for the students to read.
References
Chong, P. F., Lim, Y. P., & Ling, S. W. (2009). On the design preferences for Ebooks.
IETE Technical Review, 26(3), 213–222. doi:10.4103/0256-4602.50706
It was also found that eBooks that presented a strong contrast between the font colour and background page colour proved to be more preferable. Karla and I decided to keep the main font content the colour black on a white background to provide a strong contrast. When planning the layout of the book, we decided that it we would have the activities for the students to complete highlighted with a different background colour. We thought this would allow the students to easily distinguish between the text material and activity sections. For the background colour, we chose a light blue that was easy to look at, provided a strong contrast with the black font colour, and matched the section heading colour for a consistent look.
Lastly, readers tended to prefer eBooks that had differing title and text colour to increase scannability and differentiation between chapters. We chose to make the headings blue in colour to contrast from the black text on the pages, but provided a good contrast against the white page background. We also increased the font size of the headings for easy scalability and made the main content font large enough so it would be easy for the students to read.
References
Chong, P. F., Lim, Y. P., & Ling, S. W. (2009). On the design preferences for Ebooks.
IETE Technical Review, 26(3), 213–222. doi:10.4103/0256-4602.50706