The document summarizes the student's process for creating a children's storybook as part of a class project. They did secondary research as primary research with children was not possible. Existing children's books influenced the simple design. Planning allowed experimenting with color schemes before choosing one to tie the pages together. Production challenges included issues with photo editing software but the student worked around problems. Feedback from parents was positive about interactive elements that challenged children.

1. Evaluation
Leah Ellis

2. Research
I feel that my research went well. I did mostly secondary research, as I did
not have easy access to my target audience of 3 to 7 year old children,
although I did have access to my market audience of parents and other
adults who may buy things for young children. For example aunts and
parents that may be required to buy children books. I feel that I could have
possibly done more primary research to get a clearer idea of what exactly
the consumers of my product would like from it and so I wouldn’t have had
to go more from what was appealing to me from the viewpoint of me trying
to read it and understand it from a child’s perspective. I do feel my survey
was very useful to help me choose which rhymes to produce pages for, as it
made me sure that I needed to include certain ones that people would know
and like.

3. I did do some existing product research and I think that they were quite
useful as they gave me a good idea of how to make it simplistic and
appropriate for children to read as I have not read many books for that
audience in quite a while. I feel this did influence my work quite a lot as
I tried to keep the pages simplistic and with this style I discovered of
keeping a very simple colour scheme.

4. Final Concept
I feel that my concept for this project was quite good as it gave me a
solid idea of what I was going to be doing and how it would fit in with
the age range I was planning to aim it at. It still did require a bit of
development as I feel that I had not figured out all of the small details
like font size and how much space the text would take on each page,
which was definitely not a good idea as that did lead to me having to
change a few designs last minute.

5. Planning
I feel that my planning was very useful as it gave me a great chance to
experiment and try out some different colour schemes and design
choices that I could use. This was extremely effective for me as it
allowed for me to go through and see how many different colour
schemes would work, and to help me decide on my final one. Even
though it needed to be developed throughout production, I kept to the
simple colour scheme to try to tie all the pages in together, and it was
able to be developed through planning and deciding which would work
best. You can easily tell how I kept to the original colour scheme quite
strongly.

6. I do feel that I kept quite accurate to my plans during this stage as it
seems to me that I did this quite well and so it worked to work from
quite closely by the time I had finished this stage. I had gotten through
the worst initial plans and developed them during this stage to make
them as good as possible to work from.
The initial plan for this project was to create a children’s story book or
nursery rhymes, but using fairies for the characters. This did not end up
being the result as I found that it did not suit the rhymes, that my
survey suggested using, so well and also that I was much less
experienced in that form of character design, so I would have needed
to take a rather long time to develop the characters and figure out how
best to present them.

7. Production
I have spent the 7 weeks of production working hard to try to produce the best
version of this book as possible. There have been multiple problems throughout,
but all problems are things that I have worked round as best as possible. I feel that
my product fits the target audience quite well as it is simple and bold, making it
easy to read and understand.
I also tried to vary up my pages slightly, as I decided that it would be good to help
children learn if I give them some challenges to count something on the page or
find some things but did not want it to be too much as that could get repetitive.
I did have some struggles with pasting in some of the images for the mask layer
which seemed to require me to wait it out or find a new way to paste the image in
than using the keyboard shortcuts that kept being unresponsive. This was not a
great thing for me as it is how I prefer to use Photoshop, so it did disturb my work
quite a bit but I was able to work around it easy enough.

8. I liked for the colour to not
be just plain black on
white, so I wanted it a
little more sepia in order
to help with reading it
clearer, as I know some
people struggle with the
too high a contrast and
also I wanted it colourful
like the rest of the book.
I tried hard to make it a
handwriting page, as I wanted it
to keep with the same font as
inside in order to make it more
simple and not disturb the
continuity.
To help this I have the words in
bold once, as if written over or
the example word, then made
the rest dotted to make it seem
more like a handwriting practice
sheet where the children are
meant to trace over it.I was trying out a few different colours for the dotted words but found
that this blue worked best as it doesn’t blend into the background too
much but also doesn’t stick out like a lot of the other colours that I
was attempting to use. It is also easily visible and kept with my colour
scheme, but it reminded me of the blue lines that you can see on
paper that is typically for use while in school to assist with learning
handwriting.

9. I used bright and bold
yet simple colours as
to not confuse the
children too much, but
still give them a good
amount of variety.
I used a simple, almost
handwritten font –
Stanberry - in size 35
throughout so that it is
big enough, and should
be recognisable to the
children as handwriting
so that it is simpler to
understand as they go
through. I also wanted
to make sure that the
text had big enough
spacing so they could go
letter by letter if need
be and yet still
obviously see where
each word starts and
ends.
I gave a challenge for the children so that they stay engaged with the content and also
to help them practice their numeracy skills even when they are not at school as it can
be quite hard and I find that when it is in a more fun way, it can be a lot easier to stay
engaged and learn the skills.
I wanted to make the
illustrations simple
and so that the
children can recognise
what they are of but
also not too simple as
I aim for the book to
grow with them for a
few years before they
see themselves as too
old to still use it.

10. Colour Scheme
I liked to keep my colour scheme quite basic as to not make it too complex for the
young children. I also kept to using the same colours throughout all the pages to ensure
that they flow better and keep it very obvious that they are supposed to go together in
the same book by the same artist.
I liked to have the outlines as a darker shade of the same colour as it feels much softer
and seems to fit more throughout. I did not want any really harsh edges and so I
refused to use the colour black for most areas, there are only a very small handful of
reasons why I would use black in this book that was not for text. Keeping the text so
dark helped it stand out against any colour I put behind it which, I feel, helps to read it
with very little difficulties.

11. Technical Problems
I feel that there were not too many technical problems during my work as I
was sticking to one main programme, there was a lot less to mess up and
delay my work. During my work my graphics tablet worked fine unlike the
last major project that I tried to use it on, which makes me very happy.
The scanner that I used to scan in my images to be able to draw over in
Photoshop did occasionally cause a few issues as it has before. This was
always a short lived issue that may have appeared on a machine, that if I
waited a little while was sorted and so it did not affect me too much during
this project, unlike some other projects where it may has caused more
problems to not be able to scan images in straight away or straight on the
scanner bed as I place them.

12. Management Problems
I did do this production alone and so I did not have to manage other
people. I did manage my time quite well I feel as I finished all my pages
and still had time to edit my pages afterwards as there were a few
small areas that my feedback during production told me needed to be
altered slightly to make it more appropriate. I made sure that I had all
the equipment that I needed whenever I was going to do any more
work on it as otherwise it would have been near impossible to do any
work as this project needed me to be precise with my lines and
colouring to ensure that it would be the best that it could be.

13. Emotional Problems
There were a few stresses throughout this process from the beginning to end. There were
moments throughout that made me realise that this was a slightly bigger project than I
first thought.
The first week was easy enough to go through as it was simple planning ideas for what I
could do. This was quickly changed when it got to research and I was unsure what I was
doing and it was much more confusing to get through. This lasted until my second week of
drawing as this was a very simple step for me that helped relax me to the stresses of
getting the work done.
Towards the final couple pages, I was starting to get stressed again as I knew that it was
getting towards having to do more writing sections.
A lot of the stress from this project was created more by outside situations within my
personal life that through the project, where the end of the course seemed to be
approaching too fast and stressed me out with what else it is I will be needing to do
straight after. This has been possibly more stressful than actually having to do any of the
parts of the project individually.

14. Feedback
I have received feedback from a few parents about their opinions on buying
this book for their young children who from responses, are between new-
born and 5 years old. I have discovered that they mostly seem to like the
challenges that I included as it included that bit more interaction from their
child to test them. This may be quite similar to how there are often little
extras in most popular children’s books at the moment that I know of.

15. The survey showed me that the adults were not, on average, the most likely to buy this book as they only
seemed to think it about middle, so there is a fairly good chance that it could get bought although with all the
other similar books on the market, this was probably pushed down a little. As with what is suitable and fitting of
the book, it seems that the colour scheme worked really well as they mainly thought that it was very suitable,
above the others. It also seemed the rhymes chosen were in high appraise, closely followed by the backgrounds
so that shows that the reviewers seem to have really liked them.
There were a few improvements that people have stated, mostly being for more challenges for the children as it
that aspect was quite fun. I fully agree with this that there could easily have been more challenges for the
children to play with and interact with the book in a different way. If I were to do this again, I would probably
leave a little more space within to challenge the readers and make them count or find things within the pages,
possibly having one as a spot the difference, or including a word search to improve the interactions. I did not
think to put them in this book as I did not know how well parents would want more interactions.

16. Intentions
The intentions of this project, for me, was to create a simple, hand
drawn book for young children to enjoy. This was to be a very simple
design choice to make it seem like it is more of a friendly, home-drawn
vibe throughout all the pages, and also to keep it consistent in terms of
art style and text. This would be making it feel easier on the child to
follow it through and to associate it with my art style so that they know
which book the pages would have come from, as you can with many
well known, established artists.

17. The printing process was not as easy as it was first planned to be.
The process of printing from Aldi photobooks was much more awkward
than I first thought and was needing more pages than I had planned for,
or ended up producing.
This needed me to go to Tesco photobooks, which was the next
cheapest option, but still of a good quality.
This process was quite straight forward and was much easier than I
originally thought it would be, with
Printing

18. Improvements
During evaluating this product, I realised there were a few things that I
would have done differently if I was able to do it again.
I realised that I should have measured out margins for the book, so I
would know how far in the text had to be for printing so I don’t cut off
any of the pages. I would have also checked out the printing services I
was wanting to use, as I managed to not check the original plan and had
to change my mind last second. This ended with my book being printed
with slight white gaps around pages, as I had to move certain pages just
very slightly to fit the text and important parts of the images on the pages
better.