Exercise - Working for Children

In my research for compiling examples of imagery for children I have focused on book covers. I discovered several excellent resources.

Foremost was the Random House publishers web site, where a vast collection of children's book titles were helpfully divided in to age ranges that more or less reflected that required by the exercise brief.

I found reference material on sites both UK and US based. From behance.net and their Yo Yo Phonics project illustrations. To several blogs containing pre reader and kindergarten material. Also a Guardian newspaper online article on setting up a childrens home library, also divided by age range.

On the whole I would say that age ranging was a bit of a moveable feast at the lower end the differences between Pre-reader and pre-school were not easily defined, indeed some books assigned to the 5 - 7 category were also described as ideal for first readers. I suspect that the differences in ability between the top and lower ages in each range could potentially be quite big, so in imagery design terms this amounts to a deal of flexibility in approach and was sometimes reflected by quite intricate designs in an age bracket where simple imagery seemed to be standard

Any way moving right along....here are my collections for each group

For the sake of this exercise I have redefined the starting group to include Pre-reader with pre-school

My early reader collection.

It is difficult to make observations on a small selection without seeming to generalise but there does appear to be a tendency to use blue in the design, particularly in the younger age ranges also where exotic animals are used for the this range as the target age goes up the animals used seem to be more domestic,there are also some good examples of the different ways text is used in the design, from extending from the imagery as in the case of Mister Magnolia to Contrasting with it like Mrs Armitage on Wheels. I also noted that text embellishment doesn't start appearing untill the early reader designs.

And in the 7 - 9 category..

For older age groups I visited the goodreads.com site, Young adult and middle grade (9 - 12yrs)section.

the leap in sophistication of design is evident and what is going on can, perhaps, best be described here: http://writeforkids.org/2014/01/the-difference-between-middle-grade-young-adult/ although specific about the last age range I feel that it also has implications, in general terms, for the changes in design considerations between each group

My choice groups to focus on are; Early and Established readers. Initially my choice of word to explore was Growing. Let brainstorming commence

The giraffe quickly sprang to mind as my animal of choice as the difference between a young animal and an adult is nicely exaggerated.

Perhaps reaching up for something that is currently out of reach...

I started to think the scope of the word 'Growing, was limited and so decided to have a look at another. Combining my thoughts and research done so far, I persevered with the giraffe idea. My thinking being that an image of a young giraffe peering over a 'hedge' for the first time could be ascribed to the word Discovery

I will use this idea for my early reader design and was already exploring an idea based on a horse lifting something to reveal a new world of bugs etc underneath

I chose to keep the Giraffe design for the early reader simple and use blocks of colour. I decided that for speed and flexibility that I would look to the Procreate painting App on my Ipad

Importing my giraffes head line drawing I used an airbrush tool to apply colour. I had trouble positioning the Giraffe to give the proportions of colour I was after, which created a curious effect of spray over sharpe edges within the design.

I took the same approach for my second design but in keeping with my earlier observations created more of a situation in the design.

And given the Procreate treatment

Exercise Packaging

Taking the biscuit

In store and online 'hands on' research would suggest that in general red is used a lot in the design of biscuit packaging. Whether. It's background, graphics or font there always seems to be a bit of red somewhere.

The few exceptions appear to be because blue and green seem to be used when the item is marketed as a more healthy option or 'lite' version. Or in some cases where the biscuit is not the healthy option the marketing people have seen that to stand out on the shelves avoid red.

Perhaps for an explanation of why all this reliance on specific colours is so, It's probably time for the colour emotion guide

Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

The extinct animals I have chosen to start with are the Dodo and the Mammoth. Later on I chose the Iguanodon as the third

I found various images of each creature but my key reference are these:

Part of the reason for choosing these images in particular was the siting of the biscuit. I am keen that there is a direct contact between the character and the biscuit image i.e. that the animal can be seen holding the biscuit in some way. I have been giving this some thought as I did the visual research

I thought that the Dodo could hold the biscuit in its beak. The tusks on the mammoth appear equally convenient.

Next I practised sketching from some of the reference images

And a few more with some alternative biscuit positions

And a larger pen sketch of the Dodo with a biscuit tucked behind its wing.

I am going to take this idea forward into my 'thumbnail' designs ideas.

Now I am switching to the third, as yet neglected, creature. The Iguanadon

Currently I have placed it on top of the biscuit

Now for some design ideas to take to visuals

Prior to completing visuals I had a look at some font styles

These are Caveman and Caveman Rustic,easily rendered by hand which also adds to the prehistoric look. I copied from an on screen sheet of examples on to tracing paper. The idea being that I could lay the text over the design for repositioning.

Here are the fonts used for the Dodo design

Here are my client visuals

As can be seen by this time I had changed where the biscuit would show on the lizard design I think it is more in keeping with the notion that the biscuit is being presented to the consumer by the creature.

The font used on the Mammoth design is yet another font called Caveman. I have decided that my mock up will be based on the Mammoth Chocolate Chip biscuit packaging.

Design point; From looking around the supermarket I would say that most biscuit packaging design even for children, is done on a simple very graphical basis

So its seems a valid objective to fall in line with this style, whilst maintaining the essence of the visuals.

I made several attempts to create a landscape. I looked at Adobe Illustrator, but even a crash course wouldn't equip me with the technical skills required, so went back the photoshop. I Created

To be honest I think its rubbish...But decided to try it as the basis of the mockup

Version 1

I noticed that the resolution was not right and there are elements that I am not happy with.I put the design together again the following day

As I had started from scratch I played about with the background landscape and a couple of other design elements.

It was then that in experimenting with filters etc that I tried a layer style at random and completely covered the landscape in a single colour; mmm lots of red

it certainly has impact and I quite liked it; this may represent a dramatic shift away from the original design but I thought it worth pursuing. So using a finished biscuit box created a mockup using photo inkjet paper after adding some extra cave painting figures.

Here is the mock up of my original idea, just for comparison.

It actually works quite well. If I add the word 'Cookies' in the brown splodge, which incidently I kept because it looked like a cave, i think we have the basis of a competent design

Post exercise comment; Did I really need to move away from the completely hand painted look of the visuals? I felt at the time that there was so few examples of that style on packaging that it was best to 'go with the flow' as it were. As with all the last few exercises I feel that this one again has highlighted to me my own areas of design deficiency, areas where I feel I can improve but just don't get the time and sometimes the inclination to do the experimenting required

Exercise Text and Image

Fat - Thin * Fun - Boring * Fast - Slow * Calm - Mad * Big - Small

Initial use of the words

In my own hand and an early attempt at rendering descriptively

A few more attempts

Turning to photoshop and experimenting with combinations of fonts

Concentrating on a couple of the pairs of words

by using 'transform' and adding some shape to the text in this way I can use the same font and still keep the descriptive contrast between them

I also discovered that some pairs can share font selections for instance Fat / thin and slow /fast

However although I kept the arch of 'slow' in the same font as 'Fat' I changed the font for a 'faster' looking Fast. I thought it was a neat idea to also create the arch within the 'slow' as this replicates how a spinning disc behaves with the outer edge spinning slower than the inner or so I thought. As it 'turns' out, this is incorrect the tangencial velocity is greater at the outer edge. Maybe I should swap them round

Any way, further experimentation

Now having introduced some colour I take a further look at some of the other pairs of words

'MAD' can be simply rendered as just an eclectic mix of fonts

Now for some hand drawn stuff..

And some in mixed media. The meaning and contradiction can be further enhanced with colour and effect.

playing around with some everyday objects around the home...

I put this together