I began to research into some of my favourite children's book illustrator's such as Dr Seuss and Quentin Blake as I just love the expression and imagination in their work and I knew this was an extremely important part of the work I wanted to produce.
The cause, of course, was another huge reason for me to choose this brief as I am extremely passionate about reading and the importance and power of education. I am a babysitter and I have also worked in a Montessori nursery (where the children lead their own learning using specialised toys and tools) and I always spend at least 20 minutes reading to the children or hearing them read, in both cases the children I look after want to and enjoy reading and listening to the stories even though they may need you to keep them from getting distracted! So it is crucial that parents are encouraging this natural enthusiasm and making time for it - at least 10 minutes as the campaign suggests!
This campaign's target audience is dads, especially families from a working class background as the reading age is statistically lower. This is an extremely sensitive and emotional issue as it could easily sound condescending to parents who don't have much extra time and may not be used to reading themselves so may find it a daunting task to spend time reading with their child. Just because they are not reading to their child doesn't mean they are not spending quality time on their child. So I decided it was crucial that my promotional work was friendly, relaxed and encouraging. I wanted to take away the pressure and replace it with the sense of fun.
I started by sketching a lot of character ideas; experimenting with poses and props. I decided to have a dad with a few children to add a sense of disorganisation and distracted children- the reality of reading to children. I wanted a range of ages of children and genders; not just a girly or boy thing to read. I also wanted to represent the dad not as some stereotypical intellectual but a burly manly-man. Hopefully this would encourage men that you don't have to be an oxford graduate or a female to read to your children.
The process of creating the illustrations began by sketching in black pen into a brown paper sketchbook. I then photographed the work I selected to work further on and started to work on it using Photoshop. I wanted to add colour but I wasn't sure which ones. I started off by trying a simple blue and pink. After experimenting with a range of colour palettes I decided to use the colours from the 'Read on, Get on' logo in order to stick to the brand image. I added some rosy cheeks using the paint tool and got rid of the sketchbook background creating a clear white background instead. I also adjusted levels however mostly I kept the sketch close to the original image as I wanted the doodle-aestheic to link to the context of children's play.
I then chose a quote I love by Dr. Seuss 'You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child', to include in my promotional poster. I also included some key information and contact information from the project pack to include on my poster. I had to include the logo which was also included in the project pack. I decided to use red and black for my font to stick to the brand image. Overall I am really pleased with my final outcome and I think it works well compositionally and fits well to the Save the Children brand along with communicating the message of the brief. However, if I were to do it again I would spend longer adding colour to the image as I don't think this looks professional enough.
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