OUGD505 - Design Practice 2: Studio Brief 2 (Primary Research)

Since we have been given our second brief, I have constantly been thinking about it wherever I go. This has enabled me to collect quite a substantial amount of primary research in the form of photographs. I am going to use this blog post to document anything that I come across which I feel is relevant to my practice.

Bath

While I was in Bath, I went into a small shop which has a lot of unique gifts in there, I came across this wooden jigsaw and thought that it linked in with my work at the moment. As I am designing for autistic children, I want to create something which is as interactive as possible. So when I came across this, I felt inspired as it is very colourful and engaging and something which I could imagine taking inspiration from for my work eventually. 

I also found this which has specific allocated space for the utensils. I like the idea of creating something along the same lines, as it is interactive and engaging and something which children would really enjoy. 

Pencil Museum, Kendal

When I was in the Lake District, I went to the pencil museum in Kendal (which sounds really boring but it wasn't) I took a lot of photographs of the interactive walls and the way finding. Although I am not overly keen on the layout and the typography used, I like how it is interactive and enlarged. It makes people engage with the walls and the information provided. I also think that this kind of design is refreshing and inviting, rather than providing everything at a small scale.

I then came across this interactive display about trees. Although it is such a simple idea, it is definitely engaging. I would love to try and create a set of materials which are as interactive as this. 

I then had a look for some editorial research. I came across this collection of postcards which encourages the audience to engage with it by colouring all of the different pages in and personalising them. I would like to design something similar to this, even if it just means that the user will be able to fill in the design with some of their own writing. 

Once again this is an activity book. I am not overly keen on the design of this but I think I could find it inspiring later on in the developmental process.

Again, the design of this is terrible. However, I like how they have used the googly eyes to engage with children. The bright colours are also bright enough to attract children. This is something I am going to take into consideration with the design of my materials.

I also love how the shapes of the books resemble the content. This is something I could consider with my work. However I do want to make sure that there is consistency across the whole range and so I want everything to be the same shape ideally. 

Waterstones

I have also been into Waterstones to gather some primary research as I would like to think that my products would be sold somewhere like Waterstones eventually. I can also imagine my products to be there as they have a huge children's section. 

I came across this children's book and love the simplicity of it. I also love how the alphabet has been used throughout to address all of the different subject matters. This is definitely something I could consider with my work, as I think it is important for children to engage with the alphabet, and autistic children love things being in a certain organised order.

This book also has a lot of sensory properties, which autistic children absolutely love. Each of the pages have a different texture for the children to interact with. I would love to create something similar to this as I think it would be such memorable design. 

Then there are of course the more interactive books like the one shown below. All of the buttons are interactive, encouraging the children to press each one individually to hear all of the relevant sounds. I would love to try and incorporate sound effects into my design but I'm not sure whether this would be cost effective. It may just have to be something I will have to propose.

I love how different colours have been used to colour code this book. This is something I am going to consider when designing all of my materials as I think this is something which autistic children would love. 

This wood block set is extremely relevant for my work and I could actually use these blocks within my project if I needed to for a photography prop. However I want everything in my end photographs to all be my work.