A novel physics-based interaction model for free document layout

Marketing flyers, greeting cards, brochures and similar materials are expensive to produce, since these documents need to be personalized and typically require a graphic design professional to create. Either authoring tools are too complex to use or a predefined set of fixed templates is available, which can be restrictive and difficult to produce the desired results. Thus, simpler design tools are a compelling need for small businesses and consumers. This paper describes an interactive authoring method for creating free-form documents based on a force-directed approach, traditionally applied for graph layout problems. This is used for automatically distributing and manipulating images, text and decorative elements on a page, according to forces modeled after physical laws. Such approach can be used for enabling easy authoring of personalized brochures, photo albums, calendars, greeting cards and other free-form documents. A prototype has been developed for evaluation purposes, and is briefly described in this paper. Evaluation results are presented as well, showing that users enjoy the experience of designing a page by interacting with it, and that end results can be satisfactory.