I was immediately taken by a design for a poster by DVARTWORKS. The design creates disorder on the planet through the separation of the circle that represents the Earth as a whole. The poster essentially is saying that without trees there is no earth.

saves trees. save earth – DVARTWORKS

Using a similar style of design I would like to take the standardised colour tests that feature numbers in a series of bubbles. I have separared the bubble and created disorder and I will use a placeholder image of the character of myself and overlay the two together:

Initial Book Cover

At this point the text is a working title as well as the style of typeface. Depending on the kinds of images I choose to put on the front cover I may choose to have more geometric designs.

(UPDATE)

After the taking the photographic montage I redesigned the front cover to suit the style of the book.

To develop this even further I may choose to fracture the Ishihara test like the DVARTWORK picture. This would sort the fractured design layout that I would like to achieve in this book.

Through research I discovered a promotional video for Colour Blind Awareness #1ineveryclassroom:

Rainbow Song – Colourblind Awareness

‘Cuddle the Cloud sings us the colours of the rainbow and we see how they look to him.’

An exclusive PDF by www.colourblindawareness.org uses the kind of language I want to replicate in my book. It relates to children and how ‘cool’ it can be.

To develop the narrative of this book I looked into the dialogue used in non-fictional children’s books.

To create the narrative I looked into the key themes of this book. These being:

• Colourblindness
• Creativity
• Engagement
• Semi-sensitive issues

I’d consider the main area to focus on is creative engagement. I want to encourage children not to be limited by this minor disability but to use it to their advantage. To engage the children I will use pictures of myself in a comical way. Through this the children can feel like they are conversing with someone else who is colourblind. So the manner of the book is empathetic in a way.

I have named the character of the book ‘Colourblind Karl’, a very simple, generic name. It is childlike in manner and therefore suits the theme of the book. A working title at the moment would be ‘My Life in Grey’ which is almost a satirical take at colourblindness whereby it is extremely rare to be completely colourblind. However, the title itself is witty and simple.

Using the key themes I started to develop a narrative within the book:

Page 1:-

This is Karl. Karl is colourblind.

Karl found out he was colourblind when he was 7.

Since then he has had trouble with reds, greens, purple and blues.

Karl often does design work that require colours.

How does Karl do his work without colours?

The first page works as a introduction to the character portrayed as well as laying down a foundation to critical engagement with the children. It is also not limiting towards encouraging children to take up art/design courses. The language is very simplified for the children and therefore suits the target audience.

An immediate, almost hasty design on the first page would look like this:

Above the white space on the left hand side will be an image introducing the character. The style of the typeface is a placeholder at the moment as well as the text on the right hand side. This design is heavily influenced by the branding for Cosmico, an amateur astronomy festival.

Cosmico Branding

They use their shapes to create order but they are also disorderly placed on the page. This is intrinsically linked to the way that colourblindness is a disorder and I think this will be a suitable design format for engaging children in a creative way.

The Contracts of Literacy

Without an initial burst of inspiration for a children’s book idea I was quite open to the breadth of research I could do.

To first decide the layout and direction that the book will be heading I referred to The Contracts of Literacy (Catherine Snow & Anat Ninio (1986). These rules explore how children make sense and understand books.