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Project Overview
The Juniper app is a visually stunning iOS app that explores the story and artwork of the Mason Judy story. The beautiful illustrations were created by the West Australian artist Robert Juniper, and the author of the children's book Trevor Todd is heard narrating the story. The digitisation of WA's rare children illustrations book is the first of the State Library of WA's step towards transforming the way they curate the items in their collections.
The Android app is currently in completion and will be ready for the Google Play Store in mid October.
Project Commissioner
The State Library of Western Australia
Project Creator
Team
Debra Jones (Client) - Acting Manager Data & Discovery
Gwendolyn Ong - Digital Account Manager
Ryan Liu - Graphic Designer
Yu Hei Leung - iOS Developer
Project Brief
The State Library of WA approached us to digitise the beautiful work of prominent West Australian artist, Robert Juniper. Robert Juniper’s illustrations were created for a children’s story, Mason Judy, written by Trevor Todd.
The State Library of WA wanted to create an app that would pay homage to Juniper’s talented artwork and Todd’s narrative for a whole new audience. The development of the app is seen as the initial transformation of how the State Library plans to curates items from its collections.
The quest story is about eight year old Mason Judy’s experience of the Aboriginal myth of the Dreamtime. Our objective was to take the Juniper collection and turn it into a gorgeous app that captures the essence of the children’s story and showcase the surreal artwork by Robert Juniper. Our second objective is to encourage users to explore more information about the app, about the story and about the artwork.
Project Need
The Juniper app is seen as the pilot project for the State Library of WA’s first step towards digitising their collections and enabling universal access to a rare West Australian children’s book illustration collection.
Transforming a beautiful piece of traditional media whilst preserving its authenticity was a crucial element to the project. We wanted to enhance the user experience of reading the Mason Judy story but keep the originality of the artist and author. The artwork and story are both a significant part of Western Australian social and cultural history – something that the Juniper app needed to capture and successfully transform to a visually stunning app that spoke to people’s hearts all over the world.
With this in mind, we combined the story, artwork and narration into a remarkable trinity that empowers a reader with the best possible experience exploring the fun and magical story of Mason Judy.
User Experience
The user experience has been carefully constructed with the knowledge of traditional print media for the artwork and story in mind. We wanted to mimic a similar experience of reading the Mason Judy story from an actual book, thus we implemented a flip book feature that allows the user to experience the story and paintings like a real book.
Having a digital app gives us the advantage of implementing great features like pinch zoom so users can zoom in and appreciate the artwork in its full detail. Readers can also listen to the story narrated by Trevor Todd, with the story available on auto play so it would flow rhythmically, allowing full immersion of the Dreamtime experience.
We have carefully used the artwork as the foundation of the design of the app, employing textures that draw from the oil artwork and using brilliant colours that evoke the captivating essence of the Mason Judy story. Keeping in mind that the Mason Judy story is a children’s story, the app is educational and informative. It offers links to the State Library’s Education Program as well as small bite sized bits of extra information that takes users to explore the social and community environment at the time.
Project Marketing
The State Library of WA's marketing strategy for the Juniper app is yet to be finalised. The official launch and marketing is set for November to coincide with the schools starting to plan their programs for next year.
The launch will likely involve BHP Billiton - without whom the development of the app would be only an idea. The State Library is also hoping to involve the Minister for Arts & Culture along side schools that they have been working with so far. The date of the launch is still being finalised.
The Juniper app marketing will include postcards for distribution, web banner and news story for the SLWA website, social media marketing and articles in Cultures, Arts and Education department newsletters.9
Project Privacy
The Juniper app is a native app and all content is stored locally on the device. No information of the user is captured with the exception of ‘liking’ artwork. The ‘like’ function is managed by Parse, which stores the likes count on a highly secure server. The nature of the app means that no personal or private information is captured, therefore there are no privacy concerns.
Tags
Government Services
The provision of timely government services has been transformed as applications are developed and implemented to either replace or complement previous methods. Be it the delivery of current and up to date critical information, compliance, community support and engagement, notification and registration apps are providing greater accessibility to government resources.
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