ANALYSIS OF SLOVENIAN SONGBOOKS AND REDESIGN OF THE SCOUT SONGBOOK

Many songbooks today are the work of a single author or contain a collection of songs by different artists, groups or singers from one or more genres. However, a scout songbook is always a collection of songs for singing, usually with additional sheet music or chord symbols. The need arose to create a new scout songbook that would improve on the existing songbook “Strune do lune” (“Strings to the Moon”) in terms of content and design. The redesign of the existing songbook required an analysis of songbooks with a similar structure and, above all, a thorough analysis of the existing scout songbook from which we started. Therefore, in the experimental part, we analysed and thoroughly reviewed ten songbooks that are structurally similar to the original songbook. We analysed various criteria (format size and layout, fonts for the main text, titles and subtitles, size and spacing between text lines for the main text, x-height, special features in chorus notation, layout and categorisation of songs according to a theme, illustrations, cover design, binding method of the songbooks and certain special features such as split text verses on the other side of the page) that significantly influence the usability and visual appearance of the songbook. Based on detailed analyses and comparisons, we established sensible starting points for the design. Based on these starting points, we designed a new songbook entitled “Melodije do galaksije” (“Melodies to the Galaxy”) and confirmed that analysing existing songbooks is crucial for the design of a new songbook.