MyBook | E-book Reader from Eksmo Publishing House and LitRes

This story has started a long time ago. When we need to think of a customer that has been with us for many years, this project is the first one that comes to mind. A number of legends and rumors have grown around it. We will reveal some of them in this case study.

MyBook is Russia's first e-book subscription service offering over 70,000 books. More than 10,000 of them are free of charge. Today, MyBook app for iOS is among TOP 5 apps in Russia and the Android app ranks 18 in the Books & Reference category.

Back in 2012, Manufactura submitted a tender for the design of the Book Club website, a new service from Eksmo Publishing House and LitRes. A visual style that we suggested was a mixture of skeuomorphism and flat design. We did the best we could and created a couple pages that we are not ashamed of even now. We didn't win the contract and said goodbye to the project. But...

FEBRUARY, 2012

We lost the contract to the number one design studio in Russia, Art. Lebedev Studio. Losing to them was not a shame ;)

1. IT’S A SIGN

We lost the contract and said goodbye to the project. However, after some time, the project team came back to us. They had already come up with the name MyBook. The task was to design their logo. Working on the website design left both of us with a good impression and we happily got down to work.

We were looking for ideas in the images of book covers, in their openings, pages and bookmarks, as well as shapes of e-readers, pictograms and trends surrounding us. We presented 12 different ideas to the client over multiple iterations and one of them was successfuly approved. Some of these ideas are shown below.

july, 2012

Possible logo versions

2. EACH TIME BETTER THAN BEFORE FOR IOS AND ANDROID

At the same we started working on the iOS app design. We decided to go with skeuomorphism, very popular trend back then set by Apple in their own apps and iOS 5 in general.

Today, such solutions may look outdated, but at that time they were in harmony with the apps created by Apple.

july, 2012

Since most users read e-books on their iPads, we sought to make the app for this device as user-friendly as possible.

3. Developers’ BREAKTHROUGH

It was strategically important that MyBook presents their new product at one of the book fairs. We were entrusted to develop the first version of the app as MyBook development team has not yet been recruited. The project deadline was very strict: the exhibition could not be postponed. We have managed to complete the app on time.

august, 2012

4. FLAT VIEW ON DESIGN

In April 2013, we were asked to further develop the product. It was time to improve reading settings, add author and quote pages, reviews, collections, updated subscription options, recommendations, user profiles with reading statistics and friends as well as redesign the whole app! We had not yet seen the iOS 7 flat design, but everyone knew that the flat time was coming!

july, 2013 — october, 2014

We first designed the iPhone app interface and presented it to the client to approve the visual style and features. Then we adapted the designs to the iPad.

Once the app design was complete, we passed it on to MyBook development team. But this was not the end of our relationship: after a while, we took part in the project as developers.

5. DIGITAL LIBRARIAN

MyBook has a unique b2b offer — employee access to a number of books on a certain topic or the entire library. We have designed a landing page that shows the advantages of this offer and assists with getting a "library card".

april, 2015

6. INTERFACE THAT TALKS

The next Eksmo's project we worked on was a new audiobook subscription service Sounds of Words. The customer took care of the programming part and implementation in general while we were responsible for designing every screen of the app from onboarding to player and settings.

The app is already available for download in the App Store and ranks 8 in TOP Free apps in the Books category in Russia.

august — september 2015

Working with clients like MyBook is one of our priorities. We do our best to provide quality end-to-end service involving the best talents in interface design and software development.

Project team

Dmitriy Provotorov

Product Manager

Elena Moiseeva

Lead Designer

Dmitriy Sidorov

Art Director

Vladimir Stegantsov

Designer

Petr Tulinov

Designer

Katya Zolotareva

Designer

Darya Myasoedova

Designer

Svetlana Polishchuk

iOS Developer

Vladimir Pronin

iOS Developer

Yuriy Zolotukhin

Android Developer

Denis Khnykin

Manager

Mikhail Serkov

Manager

Olga Zarezina

Manager