Extended Practice: OUGD603: Extended Practice - YCN Collaborative Brief, Initial Brainstorm

In order to meet the requirements of the OUGD603: Extended Practice module we are required to complete a collaborative brief with another member of the course.

I was asked by Jane if I would like to work with her, we have worked together on larger group projects previously and we have participated in crits together so I have a good idea of her personal interests in design and how hard she works. We both have similar interests in branding and packaging and therefore I feel it will be beneficial for us to work together.

We had a brief conversation last semester and agreed that it would be easier to work on an competition or live brief in which it will already be written as opposed to wasting time trying to write our own briefs. Therefore we both looked at the YCN briefs and discussed together which ones we were interested in completing.

Initially taking into consideration our shared interests in branding and packaging we discussed working on a branding brief such as the J20 brief, however after analysing the briefs in more detail we decided to work on the Save the Children. We both agreed that the brief in which asks us to produce a campaign to encourage dad's to spend 10 minutes everyday reading to their children was a really good cause and would be a really nice thing to have in our portfolio. The brief is quite open as well which gave us a lot of scope to develop further and meant between us we could produce a substantial amount of work.

The hand-in of our COP Practical and written element meant we both had a lot more time on our hands in order to concentrate on the collaborative brief, therefore we met up to have an initial brainstorm on how we could resolve the brief and organise our time more effectively.

Our initial thoughts on the brief was about how they have specifically targeted fathers, which we felt was wrong. Particularly nowadays there is less and less emphasis on having the 'traditional' family, it is possible that their father may not be around or they could have a stepfather in this sense the brief is quite alienating and therefore we deciding to alter the brief to aim at all parents/guardians etc.

Our main thoughts were how we could encourage the children to want to read for fun rather than making it feel like some sort of chore.

Jane suggested the idea of an endorsement by a celebrity or linking reading with another hobby or interest. The aim of this would be for the children to see someone they admire from for example the sporting industry reading, thereby making it cool and something they themselves would want to take up. This is a technique which had been proven to work however I personally felt it was a tad cliche and we could come up with something more creative.

We discussed about what made us begin to read initially and why we kept it up. We both agreed that it was something that had been influenced by our parents. I suggested a campaign in which the child and parent would read the same book separately and then would be able to that conversation about it which would help them to bound which is something I remember from my own experience with my own friends.

I also suggested that books which were part of a series such as Harry Potter etc. were also effective in terms of the anxiety to find out what happens next. Following on from this Jane suggested the idea of creating seven little books - about ten minutes long - which are designed so one would be read each night, ideally ending on a cliffhanger so their would be that excitement and anxiety to read the next book.

We both really liked the idea which we felt would be effective in setting a clear amount that should be read each night, getting them into the habit of reading with a set routine whilst making the experience exciting and something they want to do rather than have to.

As Jane has a son who is eight years old we decided to use her knowledge of the reading level interests etc. and aim or initially series of books at 8 year olds with the idea that the concept could be extended to other age groups.

In terms of time management we decided to use the interview week at the end of February as our opportunity to print, produce and submit our design work to YCN. When we come back at the end of the two weeks we would aim to have an idea of the content of our series of books.

Although we did consider the possibility of writing our own story for the content we felt this would be quite time consuming an therefore decided to use an existing book which we could split up into seven separate books. I began by looking at the Waterstones websites and books that they recommended for 5-8 year olds.