Digital narrative site analysis

From all the sites given us to analyze I choose http://fray.com/issue1/

This digital narrative site is made of different true stories told by different people from all over the world. It called Fray. It is written in the link about the Fray that this site was initially created as a website magazine, where true stories were written and ended up with a question so that every other reader can share their stories too. But now on this website books from those stories are published. Each book contains stories of different authors on different themes, but one issue. In this blog, I will stay at each issue personally and write about its idea, organization of the page, the design of book covering and etc.

The first book is called "Busted! True Stories of Getting Caught in the Act ". The first thing to mention is that every book, depending on its issue has a different design of webpage and the book covering. Let's start with the design of web-page and the book cover for the first issue. Below you can see the screen of the main webpage. The book cover is, in my opinion, very cool! Minimalism. But still, everything is clear. The issue is "Getting Caught in the Act". Maybe these stories are about murders, or any other crimes, and how people get caught at that situations, or they can be stories about the mental crimes, not physical ones, or any other types of crimes. The book cover leads me to those ideas. The is a hand in something red, probably blood if it is about "getting caught in the Act". This picture leads me to thoughts that some person (storyteller) made something really bad, so her or his hands now are dirty out of someone's blood. 100% I would like to read this book! It made me interested only from the name and design of its coverage. Which shows the great alignment, affordance, and framing of the design. (UPD)

The site's design is very properly organized. The content of the book is listed near the book coverage. The access to chapters is in the click on the chapter's title, which is very comfortable to use. Also, when we go to one of the chapters we can see different images and there, cartoons depending on the title of the chapter (see picture 2). Those arts are very interesting to look at and lead the reader to different thoughts. I like that at the end of every chapter we can see the information about the author who wrote that story and about the painter who made the art. The huge minus of that page for me is that there are no buttons that can resend us on either previous page of content or the next chapter of the book. Moreover, when we first came up to the chapter page, we need to get a little bit down to see something, so by the first look people can think that the page is empty, which made me confuse a little bit when I first came to that page.

All chapter pages made in one common design where at the left corner we see the name of the book in a bold shrift, and the issue in italics. While in the right corner there is an illustration of blooded fingers, which are the exact thematic of the book. Overall, I like this book website very much, it is easy to use and comfortable to work through. The content is in the hierarchical order (UPD 104), and the overall design looks attractive and the book seems to be interesting and eye-catching.

Picture 2 (Art from the buzzkill chapter)

Issue 2: GEEK True stories of people taking things too seriously.

The second edition of the Fray book is made in a very different manner. There are a lot of cartoons and bright colors on the cover of the book and the head webpage. We can see different cables, personal computer, glasses (those that usually wear geeks), Super Mario and other stereotypic things about the geeks illustrated. The background on the book cover is green, which looks very fresh and funny. Overall, we can see that design is made in a funny way, which contrasts with a subtitle telling us that the book is from the people who are way too serious in some cases. I like this contrast of idea and design, it works good and seems to be appropriate in this situation.

In a contrast to the first edition, the second book has more chapters and seems to be written in a funnier way. The arts are also looking more interesting and strange. What I like about these web pages is that the problems existed in a first book, is fixed here. At the very end of each chapter, we can see the boxes with allows us to move to other chapters. It made the use of this webpage more comfortable.

Moreover, we can see and the head page that designers also included a section of reviews to this book, which is cool, and makes people willing to buy a little bit more than before.

To sum up, I can say that it seems to be a huge update in a design of a book website and a coverage as well. Designers fixed some minuses that were obvious in the previous edition, and now, the site became a lot easier to work with, and more pleasant to look at. Now it satisfies the most of Universal Principles of Design, which can be marked as a great job!

The third edition of this book is super! It looks better than previous, it is a great update, even if we take into consideration that the 2nd edition was very good organized! It is seen that designers are working very hard and shows each time a new level!

In conclusion, I want to say that I like this digital narrative site very much, and I am sure that I will look up at the new updates of this site in a future as well. I have a huge desire to read those existing 3 books and wait for new ones. The only minus of it, is of course, that the site contains not all the chapters of books, but only some of them, which makes me willing to pay for a hard copy, in order to have a full content. Despite this, I 100% can say that designers worked a lot on this site, and it is very well seen from the screen of my computer.