Design Context

I noticed that a lot of art packs that are sold for younger children use velcro to keep them shut. This is an easy and durable way of closing boxes and kids can easily open and close their art packs without breaking the box.

Handles on boxes also seemed to be a recurring theme. This means the child can carry their art books and stickers around with them - they could take it to their friends and draw with them.

A lot of arty things in The Works came with a simple set of useful objects to help them create the images described in the books, for example this particular set came with cheap pens, pencils, a notepad and stickers.

Packs that are for girls are obviously for girls - use of pink and purple was really common for girls art packs. They also had a lot of shiny parts to the designs - kids love shiny stuff!

Whereas when it came to packs aimed at boys, the design instantly changed. The colours were red, green and blue often and the illustrations were of boys and what they like rather than flowers and bunnies. Once again there was a lot of shiny material used.

Sets of books came in easy to use boxes. This kept them safe and harder to wreck.

The front of boxes told you everything you get inside the pack and had relevant illustrations scattered all over the design. The boxes are child friendly in the fact that the images and illustrations are more prominent than the text.

Another use of handle, but a plastic one this time rather than a rope handle - this handle will probably be more durable than the rope one.

The content of the books is highly illustrated. Sometimes you will have double page spreads of large illustrations and then one or two sentences of text to be read. Children at this age have only just learnt or are still learning how to read so the less words the better!

A lot of the boxes came with windows so that you can see what you get inside without having to use text to explain! Again the front is covered in images and examples of what you could make.

Even encyclopaedias written for younger children are very image orientated. There is a lot more text in this book, but this will be because it is aimed at older children - children in year 5 or 6.

The front of this book for older children also seems to reflect the fact that they can read a bit better, yet they still slap a big image on there to attract your attention and lead you in.

The content information on the reverse side of the packs is still very basic. There isn't much text and they've even laid out everything that you get in the pack in an image for children that still can't read that well.

Using a picture of a girl helps to target the audience as girls of a similar age will want to be the girl on the cover and aspire to buy the pack to do some knitting at home - almost makes knitting seem cool!

In contrast to the pack above this one, you can tell that this is obviously aimed more at younger boys. The colour scheme has changed yet again to a more masculine theme and boys tend to love dinosaurs more than girls.

I was a bit confused by the window used for this pack as it doesn't really show anything that you get through it.... The pack is very illustrative and image orientated again. It says in the corner '5+' but I reckon even younger children would be interested in this because of the use of image over text.

A good example of the use of colour to target an audience when it comes to children are these two Lego books. They're both from the same company yet they look completely different! The girl's book uses pinks and purples, whereas the boy's book uses greens, reds and blacks. They are both highly image based, yet the girl lego looks rather different to the boys lego - as if they've redesigned lego to suit a girl audience over the usual lego you would buy instore. The lego blocks themselves have changed colour to a more feminine colour scheme and the characters to play with aren't little yellow men, but are cuter girl characters with more detail.

Disney books are obviously disney as well and highly illustrated. The characters on the book are really friendly, happy and approachable. The way that they have been positioned makes them look really excited about colouring and it will get the child involved as she will think that she will be just as happy as Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck.

The inside of the colouring book contained one sentence on each page that explained something about the picture that you can then colour in. The book is extremely simple and easy to follow, and the pictures to colour in are big enough for the child to colour it as messily or neatly as they wish.

I noticed that a lot of art books aimed at children are ridiculously colourful! They use the idea of primary and secondary colours mainly when it comes to colour schemes, and make everything look like rainbows - bright, colourful and fun!

The inside of this painting book is very clear and easy to follow with step by step navigation around the pages. They've even included some key colours that you could consider using when painting your landscapes. On the right page at the top they've included variations of how your fields could look as well when it comes to painting.

I liked the idea of this colouring in book as the sentence on the page asked you to do something to complete the picture, for example the dog on the right has a blank space underneath his paws and then it says "Draw a bone for the puppy" at the top of the page. I think this is a good idea, as it gets the child to interact with the colouring in book in a different way to usual, where they have to invasion things themselves and use their imagination to come up with a drawing of a bone or a wand, etc.

Stickers were a big thing when it came to children's activity books - I remember absolutely loving stickers when I was younger and had a box where I collected loads of stickers for when it came to making cards for christmas for my family.

A few books came with some free crayons to help give the child an idea of what colours they could use when colouring in the pages. This particular book had pictures on one side of the double page spread, and then a blank outline of the same picture so that you could copy the colours of the other picture when you're colouring in.

This book really reminded me of when I was younger, as illustrations back then were so much more simple and not so 3D and animation generated as they seem to be now! Also the fact it says 'play and learn' on the page gives an idea of how useful this book could be for the child as they learn how to count or letters of the alphabet whilst playing.

I noticed that this book, along with a lot of books aimed at specifically younger children, had really thick stock. The pages were printed onto card so that the book can be thrown around, chewed on and all sorts without resulting in too much damage to the book itself!

There was also a space for a free goodie with this book, however it seemed like someone had stolen it from this one!

Another book that used thicker stock for the pages. However, this time they incorporated this thick choice with the idea that they could have parts of the illustrations cut out of the paper so that you can feel a texture placed underneath it - this page had a section of the leaf cut out with a shimmery green textured material placed underneath. I've found that younger children love to feel things.

Mr Men books are very simple, classic story books. I thought I'd look at one of these as they always have the same layout across all their stories - image on the right with text on the left. These books are a bit more text based than books for very young children, however even the youngest children can engage with them as the illustrations are really clear and fun to look at and their parents can read out the story aloud to them whilst they look at the pictures.