The challenge for ebook designers and developers...

The challenge for ebook designers and developers is to think less about “layout” and more about “choreography.”

Text can be fluid and responsive — it can reshuffle itself due to display size, orientation, or user interaction. Our job is not to dictate where words on a virtual page must be, but instead to guide them to where they should be. It is not enough to overload a digital page with clickable doo-dads, overlays, and animation: all the elements must move together in concert and, above all, not impair the basic reading experience or enjoyment of the work. This implies a close relationship between an author, a visual artist and a developer — all three must work together to create compelling, adaptive, interactive texts.

Liza Daly, Owner, Threepress Publishing, to Jenn Webb of O’Reilly Radar. At its best, digital design is choreography.