“It is no exaggeration to say that in five months Books & Print Sandbox has delivered as much as some mainstream publishers have done in five years"
 - George Walkley, Head of Digital for the Hachette UK Group”

Books and Print are technologies that have reformatted and crossed platforms throughout history, copied first by hand and then changed by the printing press for mass reproduction. With the advent of digital printing technologies our concept of text as a fixed object is more challenged and more malleable than ever. Our Books and Print theme asked how can we ensure the act of reading remains pleasurable in an age of screens? That new kinds of opportunities to write and tell stories are opened up? How can we use the affordances of new technologies to maximise potential and not merely ape the printed form?

Our projects explored everything from writing for multiple technologies and creating immersive experiences, to thinking through how contemporary on-demand publishing might operate, through to new ways to explore data and archives. Platforms for community news, interactive horror mazes, new literary works told across devices and cities and playful ways to interact with metadata were among some of the outstanding prototypes developed by our Books and Print projects. We also commissioned a paper that shared our insights on the future of books and print with the publishing industry.

You can visit our archived Books and Print microsite here

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