Following our two weeks off me and Jane met up on the first day back in order to discuss our thoughts on the content of our series of books. As we had originally aimed to used the interview week commencing on the 23 / 2 / 2015 as our opportunity to print and produce our final outcomes ready for submission to YCN we felt it was imperative that we set our content as soon as possible.
Over the break Jane had looked at books her son, whom is in the age bracket we intended to target has been reading at school to get a better idea of the content which excites 8 year olds, the lengths of books we should be looking at and the ratio of text to illustration. She noticed that quite a lot of the books for that age range were text heavy, however as we were encouraging children to read we felt it was necessary to simplify the books down slightly.
I looked at some of the books that my mum had kept from when I was younger, in particular Roald Dahl which seemed to be the perfect length ( when split into seven about ten pages per book) however with Quentin Blake's illustration's so iconic we felt it would be a mistake to try and design our own.
We were unsure about whether we should used one book which would then be split into seven as the content or to use as series of different stories with a overlaying theme. Therefore we decided that Jane would look at one book which perhaps did not have as iconic illustrations as the Roald Dahl books and I would look into short stories to devise a theme. We arranged to meet again tomorrow to discuss our ideas and devise the final content.
3 / 2 / 2015
My initial idea for creating a overlaying theme for our series of books was the look at fables, as the same animals tended to feature in different stories it could act as a series of adventures for one character. I also like the idea of having a moral at the end of the story which would be appropriate for children and give our brief more purpose, the length of the fables was also perfect for the content of one 10 page book. I brought the idea to Jane however she felt, quite correctly that the animal protagonist could be a little childish for our target audience.
Another suggestion I made was that each of the seven stories could take place in a fictional row of houses, one story for each house which could then inform the design for the packaging for our books. We both liked this idea and Jane discussed how we could make a box which looked like a street of houses, each door would be perforated - inspired by the idea of an advent calendar - which the child could rip to reveal the next book adding to the excitement.
6 / 2 / 2015
I found a website called which was useful in terms that we could narrow down the search for stories based on age range and reading time. We used this site to source stories which would be appropriate for our concept.
Our final stories are:
1. The Dandruff Prank by Evelyn B. Christensen
2. Unforeseen Adventures and Hidden Treasures by
3. Dad's Stupid New Job by Antje Hergt
4. Marcelle and The Kitchen Monster by A. Joseph Black
5. Far Away Adventures by Walter Morales
6. Duet in B Flat by Shelly Kerker
7. Joey Goes to Clutterland by Denise McCabe
Although we decided that we would both read all the stories so we had a vague idea of what was going on in each one, I would concentrate on stories 5, 6 and 7 in terms of designing illustrations and Jane would look at stories 1, 2 and 3. To make it fair we would share story 4.
I wrote a brief description for each of the stories and made a note of possible visual images which I personally felt would be good to illustrate.
We both agreed that the watercolours had a soft feel to them which was simplistic without being too childish. This technique is also something that we are both yet to try in our work and felt it would be an interesting contrast in our portfolio.
For 11 / 2 /2015:
Design a DPS proposal for one of our stories
As the illustrations and layout for the books are going to be designed by both me and Jane it is important that we create a sense of consistency throughout our work, therefore we set a series of rules for ourselves to abide to before going away over the weekend and designing a DPS
Rules
- Illustrations will be simplistic and not too childish
- The medium we will use is pencil / fine liner over watercolour
- The format of our books will be 18 cm x 18 cm with a 12mm margin all the way round
- 12pt Sans Serif font - Needs to be easy to read
- Staple binding
We did consider a 15 cm x 15 cm book however the 18 cm x 18 cm still felt comfortable to hold in the hands and would give us more freedom with layout design.
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