Ammunition Partners With Barnes & Noble Raises the Bar in Tablet Design With New NOOK® HD and NOOK® HD+

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Last week, Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) introduced the lightest HD and full HD tablets, to critical acclaim. The new 7-inch NOOK HD and the 9-inch NOOK HD+ were designed by award winning design studio Ammunition working with Barnes & Noble to create the best reading and entertainment products on the market.

“From the beginning, we knew design would be key to breaking into the e-Reader market. With Barnes & Noble’s long history of providing customers with an array of reading and entertainment content, we believed the company could lead the market in terms of user experience and design”

Ammunition has been a design collaborator with Barnes & Noble from the very first NOOK e-Reader more than three years ago, and has been an instrumental partner in developing NOOK products, including the new tablets and the award-winning NOOK Simple Touch^™. “From the beginning, we knew design would be key to breaking into the e-Reader market. With Barnes & Noble’s long history of providing customers with an array of reading and entertainment content, we believed the company could lead the market in terms of user experience and design,” says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition and the creative lead for the NOOK design efforts.

Ammunition has worked closely with Barnes & Noble to develop the designs, collaborating closely with the NOOK development team to bring them to market. “From our very first NOOK we designed with Robert and Ammunition, our aim has been to build the most elegant, highest quality reading products on the market,” says William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Our latest tablets, NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ are great examples of the kind of intuitive, ergonomic designs that have helped make NOOK so highly rated with millions of customers.”

The NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ have entered the tablet arena with a compelling story to tell, making them instant contenders for the heavyweight, or more appropriately, lightweight title. “Our experience in developing dedicated e-Readers has served us greatly,” says Brunner. “Working with Barnes & Noble, our emphasis has always been around making the product feel great for users to hold and use for hours at a time. This experience has sharpened our focus on size, weight, balance and form, and the NOOK HD and HD+ are the latest and best examples of our expertise in this area.”

With vibrant, high-resolution displays, lighter weight, comfortable feel and unique design characteristics, NOOK and NOOK HD+ shine brighter than the competition. “When it comes to the idea of design in the tablet space, most companies seem to think the world ends with a rectangular piece of glass with rounded corners,” states Brunner. “We think there are more opportunities for expression in terms of form, detail and construction, and we’ve demonstrate this with the new NOOK HD products.”

With a sculpted edges for a relaxed holding, a single-hand width for a more secure grasp, and highly refined finishes and details, the NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ were designed for customers to spend hours enjoying reading and entertainment content, and who appreciate good design.

NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ are available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble stores and at www.nook.com.

NOOK^®, NOOK^® HD, NOOK^® HD+ and NOOK^® Simple Touch^™ are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

About Ammunition

Ammunition is a product, identity, and interaction design company. Based in San Francisco, Calif., the firm is led by its founder, renowned industrial designer Robert Brunner, and his acclaimed partners creative director Brett Wickens and strategist Matt Rolandson. Its team is comprised of designers, engineers and brand strategists dedicated to creating product, service, and brand experiences that matter. The company has capabilities in industrial design, graphic design, design strategy, brand development, packaging, engineering, web development, user interface, prototyping and production implementation. Voted one of the “ten most innovative design firms” by Fast Company, Ammunition has been featured in top business and professional publications, and is best known for its recent work in creating the Beats by Dr Dre brand and product line. For further information, please visit ammunitiongroup.com.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, operates 689 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 667 college book- stores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through BN.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than 3 million titles in its NOOK BookstoreTM (www.bn.com/ebooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK® product offering, customers can buy and read digital books and content on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK devices and the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK apps. Barnes & Noble is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associated 2012 Customer Service Champion and is only one of 50 U.S. companies so named. Barnes & Noble.com is ranked the number one online retailer in customer satisfaction in the book, music and video category and a Top 10 online retailer overall in customer satisfaction according to Fore See E-Retail Satisfaction Index (Spring Top 100 Edition). General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com. Follow Barnes & Noble on Twitter (www.bn.com/twitter), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/barnesandnoble) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/bnstu-dio).

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