Reflective Essay
Introduction-
Children’s Book Design is the first module in which I have
been given a live brief to work with, and despite its challenges it has been a
very substantial learning experience for me. Working to a live brief meant that
I was able to get continuous feedback from the clients at The National
Archives, so that I could constantly develop my work to suit their needs.
Although this sometimes became challenging, following our visit to The National
Archives and revision of the brief with tutors I was able to formulate an idea
of what would work best as a response for the brief. Furthermore, the lectures
I had throughout the beginning of this module became a huge help when it came
to creating my own work as I was able to draw from this new-found knowledge to
improve my own work. This was especially helpful in regard to ‘Design &
Typography’ and ‘Grids and Layouts’ (See appendix A), this is due to the fact
that I have an illustration background so learning how to structure my work for
certain audiences was very helpful, plus it also helped in regard to designing
different layouts for pages as it helped me to easily figure out how all the
different elements would fit together on the page. Also learning about typography
used in a variety of children’s books really helped when coming up with my own
designs as I was able to figure out whether it would be more useful to use a
Serif or San Serif font dependent on the age of the child the publication is
aimed at.
Research-
Before beginning the designs for the final brief, I carried
out some research of existing publications that were aimed at a similar audience,
that being Key Stages 2&3. Through my research the first collection of
books that I came across that had similarities to the ideas I had for my own
brief were the Key Stage 3 History books by Aaron Wilkes (See appendix B). The
first element that struck me about his books were the really vibrant and
dynamic front cover designs that he used, which I think is a great feature. I
think cover designs like this are so important because it gives the topic of
the book more life, which in turn engages children, whom otherwise may be
disinterested if they were faced with an educational book that was heavily text
based. Looking through the pages of his books you can see that Wilkes continues
to use characters to bring his pages to life, as well as using them to break up
large amounts of text. Despite the child audience being from Key Stages 2&3
being able to cope with reading large amounts of text it’s still important to
break up pages with visually interesting layouts, as their attention spans can
be quite short and they are more likely to get bored if the pages are mostly
text based. Therefore, offering a change in page dynamic helps them to remain
engaged (See appendix C). However, it’s still important to give them a certain
amount of structure, specifically when it comes to answering questions in the
book, as this helps to prepare them for exam questions further down the line.
Wilkes also seems to encompass his text in a variety of ways on a page, which I
think really helps separate different types of text, such as information, sources
and questions.
The next publication
I came across that fit the genre of historical learning that was also aimed at
children aged 9-12, was the series of ‘Horrible Histories’ books (See appendix
D). This series of books are the most well-known for educating young people about
history in a fun and interesting way, and their success is proven by the fact
that the series is still being enjoyed by children today, 10 years on. The success
of the books can be credited to the witty way in which the writer, Terry Deary,
re-writes historical events in a way in which children will be interested to
learn about history. Plus, the way in which the illustrator, Marin Brown,
brings Deary’s words to life through comical characters helps to give children
a point of reference to popular figures from history, as well as giving them a
break from text. However, one thing that could be seen as a downfall in the
Horrible Histories book series is that the author doesn’t actually reference
any historical sources, so despite teaching children about history in a fun way
the facts aren’t actually backed up by sources. This means that it doesn’t
really teach children what history really is, which is something I hope to
tackle in my own work. I want the use of sources as a way of learning about
history to be at the forefront of the publication I produce, as I also know
from meeting the client that this is a vital aspect for them too.
Further research for
this brief mostly consisted of the trip to The National Archives, which I felt
was fundamental to learning what the clients really wanted from our final
outcomes. The most helpful part of the experience was participating in one of
their educational workshops, similar to what children would do if they
attended. This workshop and the staff helped to make it very clear of the
preferred process they liked students to use when investigating documents. They
wanted the document to be the main focus and didn’t give the students too much
previous knowledge as they wanted them to think for themselves and to look at
the document as an isolated source. From the workshop, it also seemed that
group discussion was a big aspect of their teaching method, and due to the fact
that the publication I am producing is meant as a follow-up booklet following
this session, I believe it was important for me to continue this group work
trend.
Design-
Before deciding on a design for any of my pages I made the
decision that I wanted the whole book to have a continuing theme, which would
be ‘Crime and Punishment Throughout History’. I did this so that they style I
decided to work with could be used throughout and all the pages would look as
though they were from the same publication. Plus, once children learn how to
investigate documents and apply their knowledge they can move onto comparing
documents, so grouping together ones of a similar topic would make this easier
for them. Furthermore, I have pervious knowledge of this topic which made it a
lot easier for me when it came to designing and writing era summaries which will
hopefully aid the children.
When designing my
pages for the activity book I wanted to make sure they had quite a simple
structure that was easy to follow and wanted to continue a similar layout
throughout. I decided to work in grey scale while designing to begin with as I
wanted to focus on design and not get distracted by colour schemes, however
after trialling some of the documents on darker backgrounds and comparing it to
just a plain white background I realised that it worked way better as it helped
the documents to stand out a lot more and I believe that contrast helps text in
some of the documents to be more legible. Once I had decided that I wanted to
work with a ranged grey to black colour scheme I was able to start adding
layout blocks for where certain text and writing space was going to be on the
page. Following a few re-shuffles, I landed on design that I think works really
well (See appendix E) the main focus of the page being on the left, the
document and questions, then secondary material being on the left, document
description and short era summary, and the tertiary material, the timeline, at
the bottom of the page. I think my choice of layout will help to give the child
focus on different areas of the page and I believe that keeping all the
elements vertical instead of angled, will give an easier reading experience. As
well as the fact that the child will be able to focus more of the document and
learning rather than an awkward layout.
After focusing so
much on layout I realised that I was leaving behind one of the aspects that I
liked so much in the two main publications I looked at in my research (See
appendices C&D) which was the inclusion of a fun character that helps to
engage the students initially. So, I began to throw around some ideas of what I
could do, and most of my initial ideas revolved around cartoon style
illustrations of historical figures from the time period of each page spread,
however I found this to be too predictable. Therefore, I thought back to my
trip to The National Archives and remembered the story of how the archives came
to be and it was all because of a rat, plus I also noticed that some of their
existing promotional materials utilised the animal as a mascot (See appendix F),
so I thought it would be a perfect device to use as a character to give my
pages more interest.
Production-
When it came to finalising my designs into the completed
prototype book I opted to use Photoshop. Despite our tutorial session using
InDesign, I believed that I would be able to produce by best work using
Photoshop instead. Although I appreciate that nearly all industry professionals
who design children’s books use InDesign, I knew that if I were to I would just
end up battling against a program that I knew very little about. There are
obviously many merits to using InDesign especially when it comes to insert and
arranging text, however been as I have an Illustration background and have a
lot of knowledge about how to use Photoshop I think it was overall the best
option for me. I believe that Photoshop was very useful to me when it came to
working with my digital illustrations within pages and trailing different
colour palettes was also a lot easier.
Conclusion-