Friday, 13 March 2015

OUGD404 - Design Principles - Studio Brief 2 - Interim Critique


I organised an interim critique for people's design so far for design principles. When I showed my design ideas so far (as above) someone immediately asked what font size I was going to use, I currently had 20 something pt as it was a children's book so they suggested that it should be smaller maybe 18pt max, 15pt perhaps if I have a lot of text on one page.

I was also questioned on the use of the serif font, they asked if should it be sans serif to be more readable. I wasn't sure about this as the original green eggs and ham book was serif. I also thought that using a serif font would reflect the character and personality of the book. However when trying out some different sans serif fonts I found that Futura worked really well as it is really legible and looks quite friendly and inviting. 

This was the original font I used which is Bodoni book. 



This is with Futura and immediately the book feels more inviting and looks more modern. I feel now that using a serif wasn't the right choice as I am trying to redesign the book and to use a similar font will make it look the same.

As well as this it was suggested that I have a look at current children's books rather than ones that I like the design of. This way I can get a better feel of the layouts, font choices and sizes in order to create a very readable book for a child. 

I also showed the experiments that I did with colouring in the images as I decided to screen print the book, doing lots of different colours using screen print would be time consuming. They said that the examples I showed of watercolour over images was a nice idea as it would create a nice effect with transparency of the paints. They all preferred the splashed version rather than the neater version.

Because I am printing just black and white outlines I could maybe even do a colouring book version - could have one version hardback with watercolour, then paperback with colouring book theme. This is a really nice idea and I might do it if I have the time to. Perhaps going off the colouring book theme I could even do colour by numbers. But I do wonder if this suits the age group as it is meant for children learning to read. Perhaps shapes for younger kids? Does this limit their creativity?

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