Our fourth and final brief is to make a minimum of six pages of a children’s picture book, and include a front and back design. It has to address an issue that would affect people in some way, such as war or anxiety, and it has to be aimed at an audience of between 3 and 11.

I’ve decided to do some research on children’s books. In our seminar Mike had us looking at several children’s picture books to get an idea of what sort of thing we might do, but I wanted to look for myself to see what I liked or didn’t like about something. Below are several examples of children’s books that I enjoyed and that I felt that I could definitely draw inspiration from.

 

The reason why I like these children picture books is because of the way they are drawn. I know it’s difficult to see because there’s not a lot of similarity between the four of them, aside from the fact that the majority of them use animals as a way of connecting with their audience, but I think the sort of illustrations I’d like to use are ones that are simple and with not a lot of definition to them. For example, the simple shape of the crocodile in The Crocodile Who Doesn’t Like Water and the pigeon in Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! are all curved lines and soft watercolour like paintings and I really like that idea. This can be seen in The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, but the drawings are a little more complicated and detailed. I do like Quentin Blake’s drawings though (who illustrates many Roald Dahl books), and perhaps it would be better to include a little detail in my designs.

The Stick Man is included in this because I liked the idea. It follows a stick man who has a stick family and a tree that he lives in quite happily, but unfortunately he is often mistaken for just a simple stick, and is taken away from his family by a dog, a swan and children playing with him. I thought the idea was very unusual and interesting and even though it doesn’t address an issue like we are supposed to do in our books, I do like it. The illustrations are also very good, but I think they’re perhaps a little too complicated for me.

I think these four books also roughly account to the same age range of around six to eight or nine, which I think I will probably also use in my book. I don’t want to appeal to children too young because I think I would find it difficult to describe an issue without complicating or confusing the intended audience, so I think that six to eight is a good age range.

 

 

 

 

 

I found the third brief both entertaining and difficult. I found it entertaining because it was fun experimenting with Photoshop and inDesign and learning how to use each of the software, but I also found it frustrating at times because the software can be difficult to use, especially when you haven’t necessarily had a lot of time using it like me. I think that my Fitnesse design does work well with the brief because I’ve worked quite hard on it, and I think that it does not fit with gender stereotypes as addressed by the client because it uses greens and oranges which are colours not necessarily associated with women. I also refused to include ‘sexy’ photos of women in my website, which cropped up a lot whenever I googled reference images, which I found a little degrading as well as adding to the stereotype of women at the gym. I wanted to show a website and gym where women could feel comfortable in what they looked like and I think that came across quite well.

However, if I was to go back and do it again, I would try and make it more clear that it was a female-only gym. Maybe a page dedicated to that fact would help indicate this more, because I don’t think that this was necessarily extremely obvious on website itself. Although I did only include images of women at the gym, that doesn’t mean that it’s clear that the gym is for women only. Unfortunately, I wish I had thought to include this before. I would also add to my colour scheme more so it’s not as flat as it is currently.

Aside from this, I enjoyed the brief and think that my work has come across nicely in response to it.

Finally, these are my swatches that I made for the colour scheme of my brief. The first swatch was made before the add of my orange colour to my logo, which is why there is no inclusion of that there.

The next swatch is one that was made based on the colour scheme of my website and my logo. Although there was some black included in the colour scheme, for me the three major colours that played a part in this were the three that have been included below. These are the dark green, the softer orange seen in the logo, and the white that has been included in the website and on the background of the logo itself. I feel like these colours work very well together because of the contrast between the dark green and the softer orange, as well as the signifiers that I have talked about earlier in my blog posts.

 

If I were to do this again however, I would probably change the orange to a brighter gold because I feel like this colour is a little inconsistent in my website as sometimes the orange was too bright and it was difficult to read so I had to darken it a little. Aside from this I am very happy with my colour scheme.

I decided to create another mockup of something that you wouldn’t normally find and I thought it would be a cool idea to create a smoothie brand that Fitnesse had created. Even if Fitnesse was a small brand or a large one, I think it would be a good idea for them to create their own smoothie range, something that could bring their community together if it was a small brand and something that could be mass marketed if not. The reason why I got this idea is because there is a gym in my home town that sells its own protein brand, and I liked the idea of a gym doing this because as I just said it brings together a sense of community.

I chose the three different colours to represent the different flavours that Fitnesse would produce. Although not specified, I like to think they are mango, raspberry and kale mixed with fruit. I liked the idea of using a white packaging, although now that I have looked at it perhaps a pale yellow or green would have worked better.

These are the business cards that I have created. A lot of the research that I did on them, which is included below, shows a lot of simplicity, which I liked. However, once again they used dark colours and then bright lettering. I didn’t like this idea, because not only did it not fit in with my colour scheme, I felt that perhaps this was too same old same old. So instead I decided to do the opposite; I made my business card background light, and my lettering dark. Not only does this, personally, means it catches the eye more, but I also think because its different it would also do this.

The business card mockups were plain when I found them and I added the text. The name “Lucy South” is written in the same font used for the ‘F’ in Fitnesse, which I felt tied in quite nicely. The background I included myself.