Media

After looking into various other forms of media.. I have decided to show mocked up versions of an ebook that could be downloaded by school and families. I feel that this would be a good cost effective means of teaching. Allowing children to access the document at home.

Here are the finished mock ups of the ebook.

I had researched creating a poster for the schools, however given more time this would have been complete.

Final spreads and cover design

Here are my final spreads and cover design.

I am pleased with the outcome of all of these designs i feel that they reflect the theme and topic well. From my research and user testing i have found that they have had good responses regarding both the design and content. 

My final activity pages

Here are the two activity pages that I wish to use in the book.

The first one is an egg decorating page, where children are able to decorate an egg this relates back to the war as children often did this when sending eggs to wounded soldiers.

The second page is a topical word search, this allows the child to focus and concentrate which is great for learning.

I am pleased with the final outcome for both of these designs, as i feel that they reflect the design of the book well. As well as providing the user something fun and interesting to look at and complete.

User testing...

Along with my two cousins, I was also able to ask some of their friends at school with the permission of their parents the following questions regarding my designs.

1. Do you understand what you have to do?
2. Do you understand how to make it?
3. What dont you like about the pages?
4. Was the worksheet easy?
5. What have you learnt?

child 1:
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. The background against the colourful images on the cover
4. Yes
5. I have learnt how to make a sponge during wartime using limited ingredients

child 2:
1. yes
2. Yes
3. I like all of them
4. Yes
5. I have learnt that sponge can be made without eggs

Child 3:

1. yes
2. yes
3. I don't like the background again the drawings on the front cover
4. yes
5. I have learnt about egg collecting

child 4:

1.yes
2. Yes
3. I like all of them
4. Yes
5. I have learnt how to make some wartime food

Child 5:

1. Yes
2. I think so
3. I like all of them
4. yes i enjoyed it
5. I learnt how to make war time food 

Design development front cover...

from the feedback that i have received by my peers and user testing. I have decided to look into changing the colour of the background use on the cover of the book. This is due to the overall majority of people stating that they do not think the background works with the drawings. 

I have decided to test out a couple of different backgrounds of which i will then make a decision of which way forward to move with the design. 

the existing background

The three new concepts. I have also edited the drawings on the pages i feel that this layout is better suited to the book. 

Overall i feel that the strongest background that works best with the book is the middle one out of the three. I like the shade of blue, i feel that it works well with the drawings and also is appropriate with the theme.

Media selection research

Ebooks

Here are some examples of ebook designs that i have found on the internet. I find most of these designs inspirational, I would like my ebook design to be simple to use as the target audience would be school children. Therefore the most important aspect would be making the ebook user friendly.

http://www.bestinteractiveebooks.com - a good website with good examples of ebooks

Promotional posters

Here are some examples of promotional posters, some of which relate to the war others are school posters. I need to consider combining the two in order to create the more effective design.

Media selections..

It is important to select various forms of media to include in your work, this enables you as a designer to envision your work in various different formats.

Ways in which my book could be developed further other than printed out for schools could be to;

• Bind and publish 
• Ebook ( online resource) 
• Create a game (app)
• Merchandise 

I have already talked about producing the book as a bound book and the specifics to which i would do so however, I thought I would briefly look into producing a promotional poster and a mock up of an ebook for the book. This would allow me to show the client ways in which the book has promise and can be adapted with ease. 

At this stage I feel that I need to conduct a brief bit of research into promotional posters and ebook designs in order for me to come up with some initial quick sketches that i can select and transform into final design ideas. 

Peer assessment...

Peer assessment allows my fellow graphic designers to look at my work so far, they critically analyse the work. Giving me feedback that i can take away and look at to help me improve.

From the peer assessment for this module i can see that overall I have managed to meet certain criteria fairly well however other areas are suffering. The constructive criticism that i have been given is...

• I need to justify everything
• to add more development sketches 
• talk about media selection more 
• i need to be more critical 
• that the cover of the book needs developing more 

From this feedback I will make sure I do my best to apply myself to my work and correct these points that have been made. 

activities page ideas thoughts and opinions

After producing the main final spreads I was then able to consider and focus on the activity pages that  are connected to both of the spreads. By using the research that i had conducted earlier in the module, i then looked at this further exploring the ideas.

My ideas led me to focus on the idea of creating some thing that would allow the user to be creative themselves and another sheet that made them think.

Some possible ways in which this could be achieved could be...

• Drawing onto a egg - relating back to the egg shortage helping soldiers out 
• a food miles page - shows where the food came from (children have to guess)
• A word search (allows children to find the items either to do with the war or the recipe)
• A maze - this would include various illustrations to do with the recipe children would have to find the items
• Spot the difference - two drawings of a kitchen from WW1 spot the difference.

Once the ideas for each were laid out I then created a few quick thumbnails before asking for the opinions of others to which they believed would be best suited.

The majority of people suggested that for the eggless sponge page a Egg decoration would be a nice idea as it would allow the children to be creative and show originality. For the other page they said that either a word search or food miles page would look good. 

Using these decisions I was able to come up with the concepts for both spread activity pages opting for the egg decoration and word search ideas. 

my designs so far

I am pleased overall with my designs so far. I feel that i may need to look at the front cover in more detail, as I am unsure whether the background works with the illustrations. either the illustrations need to be one colour or the background needs to be changed. 

The page spreads however I feel work well with the theme of the book, they give a sense of nostalgia and fun. Which is what i was hoping to achieve. 

design development continued...

Developing my designs on screen, I had to move the different images and text around the screens to work out the correct size and position in which they should be placed. This took time in order to get the desired look.