DIY First Folio – Rebecca Niles

Short video demonstrating the functionality of DIY First Folio, an interactive model of how folio-format books like Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623 were laid out during the Early Modern era.

Designer, Developer

diyfirstfolio.folger.edu

Part of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s DIY First Folio educational resource, the DIY First Folio Virtual Printing House is an interactive tool that models the building of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s works. Visitors learn how early modern printers arranged pages into sheets, and sheets into gatherings, by doing it themselves in a drag-and-drop 3D tutorial.

Building on work originating in my Master’s Thesis at the iSchool @ U of T (2012), I provided design and development for DIY First Folio and its successor, DIY Quarto, with Kathleen Lynch and Kyle Vitale, editors, and additional UI/UX support from Meaghan Brown and Stacey Redick. Built with sustainability in mind, The DIY First Folio and DIY Quarto Virtual Printing Houses are studies in simple, stable, and lightweight interactive architecture.