Scrollbook - a digital playground

Here's something a bit different ... I've been combining two of my favourite creative things - sketchbooking and scrollytelling.

This means, taking bits and bobs from my art practice (doodles, sketches and photography) and presenting them in an interactive, immersive way online.

It's acting as a weird, whimsical playground for new ideas to bring into my client scrollytelling work.

It also intentionally has no narrative and no text. This means as long as the images flow into each other in a visually pleasing way, it doesn’t really matter what order them come in. This means I can focus on experimenting instead of an overall story.

It's also a work in progress ... so expect some oddities, and frequent updates.

Visit the Scrollbook using the menu above or click here

Process

Step 1: create some art

I discovered the joy of sketchbooks in 2020,. There’s something so freeing about having endless pages to create, play, mess up and recreate. Often I’d go back to earlier pages and add more elements, colour or collage.

You can see more of my art adventures over on Instagram at carolinebeavon.art

Step 2: digitise

I have a scanner but honestly it’s got some serious attitude problems, so I simply photograph pages from my sketchbook and import them into Procreate - the iPad app.

Here I can recolour, fix, delete, combine and play.

It’s where I come up with most of my ideas for the scrolly - overlaying images and seeing what works well together.

When I used to teach infographic design I’d always encourage people to have some playtime BEFORE you lay a finger on your computer. It’s hard to come up with ideas inside a design package.

In this instance, Procreate is my play space.

When I’m ready I export the assets as PNG files with transparent backgrounds - this means I can layer and combine with more effect.

Step 3: fire up Vev

I discovered Vev back in 2020 - such a brilliant tool. According to their site “Vev is the only all-in-one design platform for professionals to create and launch unique web experiences with complete creative and technical freedom.”

In short - it means I can build brilliant things without having to code. Which means I can get on with it all that bit quicker. Win win.

Here I start building - importing the assets and combining them as needed.

Vev’s a lot of fun - you should give it a go.