nook: Ammunition Collaborates with Barnes & Noble to Create New E-Book Platform

Award-winning design consultancy Ammunition announced its collaboration with Barnes & Noble to bring a new electronic book (e-book) platform to market. Under the name "nook", the new e-book service reinforces the leadership position of Barnes & Noble and signifies a new era for the bookselling giant by asserting itself in the growing electronic book space.

The Ammunition team created a total design solution for nook, encompassing overall service design as well as the product's industrial design, user interface, accessory system, and packaging. The new e-book is a dynamic expression of the Barnes & Noble brand and signifies its continuing commitment to delivering comprehensive retail experiences dedicated to enhancing the pleasure and value of reading.

Ammunition creatively solved complex service, industrial, interaction, and brand design challenges to help create the nook platform. The nook device itself is simple to operate, easy to hold, tactile and beautiful. Clean design eliminates the need for virtually all buttons into a simple user interface. Page turn buttons are integrated into the plastic of the front bezel to allow easy use with no visual clutter. The back of the nook is also interchangeable and comes in a variety of colors allowing users to personalize the product according to their tastes.





"In developing nook, we set the design of the product as a top priority" says President of BN.com William J. Lynch. "Using style and simple, useful interaction to enhance the pleasure of reading drove the idea of what nook would be. The end result is a product that is not only highly functional, but beautiful and emotionally gratifying as well."

The nook boasts numerous advanced technical features, including the best reading and low power usage screen technology of electronic ink, along with the dynamics of color LCD and touch-screen to create a rich, exciting interface. The full color LCD touch-screen is used for all control and interaction, and includes motion and "coverflow" to make book selections. The nook also incorporates a virtual keyboard and scrolling menus for selection.

A significant part of the nook experience will be its unique, high quality accessories that will allow customers to tailor nook to their own aesthetic and functional needs. Accessories designed by Ammunition include soft and hard covers with an innovative "spine" attachment method, a unique accessory LED light, and soft "gel" covers to protect and add color to nook. The Ammunition packaging system for nook is clean, elegant and designed for maximum impact at the point of purchase.

"nook represents a new design benchmark in the e-book space and consumer electronics in general," says Ammunition Partner Matt Rolandson. "Barnes and Noble is dedicated to advancing design and user experience, and the end result of our efforts speaks for itself. Beautiful, practical, easy and fun."

nook will be available end of November for $259.00.





A New Benchmark in eBook design
nook's sleek, minimalist design puts the focus on the content, not the technology, and the combination of color and touch make navigation intuitive and simple. nook feels great in hand and features a contoured, easy-to-hold back. About the size and weight of a paperback book, nook is thin, small and portable. Its best-in-class E Ink Vizplex display is easy on the eyes with text as clear and crisp as a printed book. And with no glare or backlight and adjustable text size, you can read comfortably for hours without straining your eyes.

Color Touch for Easy Navigation
The beautiful lower color touch screen offers an immersive experience, inviting readers to virtually browse through brilliant cover art, flip through an expansive library, or search using a virtual keyboard. nook presents the controls, navigation and keyboard you need, only when you need them.

Download eBooks Wirelessly
With fast 3G wireless and Wi-Fi access, nook is the most-connected eBook reader. Browse and instantly download eBooks, magazines and newspapers simply and seamlessly on AT&T's 3G wireless network, the nation's fastest, with no set-up required or additional wireless costs. Connect to the complimentary Wi-Fi, provided by the AT&T Wi-Fi network, in Barnes & Noble stores and download at broadband fast speeds.

Lend eBooks to Friends
With nook's breakthrough LendMe technology, lend a wide selection of eBooks to friends free of charge, for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the book you want to share and send it to your friend's nook or iPhone, iPod touch, select BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones, PC or Mac with Barnes & Noble eReader software.

A Continuous Reading Experience
With "Reading Now," your virtual bookmark, nook brings you back to the last book you've read, right where you left off. And it works across a range of devices. If you forgot your nook at home, Barnes & Noble's free eReader software on your iPhone, select BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones or laptop lets you pick up where you left off, including annotations. And when you're reunited with your nook again, the Reading Now page will be updated and ready to go.

A Wealth of Content, in the Palm of Your Hand
nook can hold up to 1,500 eBooks and other printed content, and the sky's the limit for your digital library when you use nook's expandable memory slot. A 16GB MicroSD card holds up to 17,500 eBooks.

Portability and Personalization
You can also easily transfer PDF-format documents from your computer to access and read business documents, legal contracts and travel information on your nook. And transfer your photos to create custom screensavers.

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