Modern school textbooks in Japan look like magazines in terms of design and layout compared to old school textbooks. The objectives of this study are to substantiate by data the intuitive hypothesis that the design of school textbooks in Japan becomes increasingly similar to that of magazines, and to predict and prototype designs of future school textbooks. Specifically, I quantitatively analyzed how school textbook design has incorporated various typical elements found in magazines and demonstrated that “the design of school textbooks in Japan becomes increasingly similar to that of magazines". Assuming that this trend will continue in the future, I also predicted and prototyped future school textbook designs several decades from now.

I studied pages describing “free-fall” from 49 high school physics textbooks published in Japan between 1876 (the Meiji Era) to 2024 (the Reiwa Era). I classified “similarities to magazines” into four features: layout, visual, interactive, and entertainment, and examined which features increased.

I chose physics as the textbook subject because the content of physics is not likely to change over time.

In this study, I defined “similarities to magazines” as the following four features:
1. Feature 1 Layout. Specifically, I counted the number of elements of page layout within the pages. A school textbook becomes increasingly similar to magazines as the number of elements increases in a page.
2. Feature 2 Visual. Figures, photos, and illustrations abound. I actually checked the following four elements: the number of non-textual elements, the number of font types used, the area ratio of non-textual elements, and the number of colors used on the page.
3. Feature 3 Interactive. Specifically, I checked the following three elements: the number of questions/problems that encourage the users to think, the number of QR codes or links to access additional content.
4. Feature 4 Entertainment. Specifically I checked the following two elements: manga-style illustrations and the number of interesting anecdotes.
In order to determine exactly what it means for a school textbook to be “modern,” I calculated the correlation coefficients between the data on the four features of similarities to magazines found in 49 school textbooks (ten elements) and the publication year of the textbooks, and sorted them in order from highest to lowest.

My findings are:
[1] All four featurets (ten elements) were positively correlated with the publication year. In other words, it indicates that the design of school textbooks in Japan becomes increasingly similar to that of magazines.
[2] The element that showed the highest positive correlation with the publication year was the number of elements of page layout in the pages(0.81). Visual elements such as the number of fonts(0.70), the area ratio of non-textual elements in the pages(0.74), and the number of colors used(0.64) also showed a high positive correlation with the publication year. Correlations with entertainment(0.18-0.30) and interactive elements (0.27-0.35)were not as high.

As a result of this study, the hypothesis that “the design of school textbooks in Japan becomes increasingly similar to that of magazines” was found to be correct. Based on this hypothesis, I also predicted the design of school textbooks decades from now and asked designers to create prototypes.

Keywords: Textbook, design, magazine, layout.