CDHGraphicDesign

The brief

The brief stated that a recipe booklet called «healthy food for growing kids» should be designed for parents and young children. The booklet will contain nutritious recipe that are easy enough for children to make with a bit of help and guidance from an adult.

The booklet design should present the creative meals in an equally creative way. The booklet should also have a front and back cover, an introduction page, an index page with a list of recipes and page numbers (contents), the recipes themselves and lastly, contact information.

The designer is allowed to add introductions, fun facts or additional information. However, the designer can not change or edit the original text from the client.

The client does not provide any visuals, therefore the designer has the responsibillity to source and provide the visuals for the booklet. By own photographs, stock, illustrations or combining all of the above.

The format of the booklet should be:

• A5 (210 x 148) – portrait or landscape
• Facing pages
• 5 mm bleed
• Process colour: CMYK
• Page number must be divisible by four.
• Exported as a print ready file PDF.

Analyse the brief

What kind of resources were given to complete the design? Is it adequate? What do you need to add to the resources to complete the design?

The resources is a comprehensive information text with the brief about the booklet and how the client wants the booklet to grab the attention of their target group. The brief also gave information about target group, which is parents and their young children.

Further the brief had an attachment with all the recipes, introduction and contact information.

The resources is adequate, however I need to add visuals and some more text with information. Maybe even a fun activity page for the kids!

To complete the design I need to figure out the theme, colour palette, typography, grids, margin, visuals and so on! There is a lot of creative work ahead of me.

What should the main theme or focus of the booklet be?

The main theme should be fun with cooking designed for kids. It should be inspiring and easy for the children to understand the content. I want the design to be colourful and exciting for youn children, and have visuals they percieve as funny to look at! So they really want to turn to the next page! Further more the focus should also be to create a learning and bonding situation between parents and their children. So that they can learn about healthy food, while working on fine motor skills in a safe and fun invironment.

What kind of imagery should be included?

I am already visualizing that the booklet should have both photographs of food, and funny illustrations. It’s crutial to keep the energy through the booklet, to grab the young children’s attention.

I really want to create a funny character for this book, a cartoon that follows the child through the book. Maybe the character does things a bit wrong or is clumsy – just to show that it is normal to be a bit clumsy and that we can laugh about it. In that way I want to capture the kids attention and make them want to keep reading and participating. As a mother, I truly know how short the attention window of a child can be and that they need motivation and energy to keep the focus.

Should the images have captions?

Yes, for a recipe booklet designed for kids I think that it is a good idea to have captions for the photographs. Just so that they can try to read what it is, or maybe a parent can read about what is in the image.

However, I think this is something I need to research further before I decide what to do in the design. If I where to have the food imagery like cut-outs or other creative way – it would be wrong to include captions.

What should the look and feel of the booklet be?

The booklet should look colourful, playful and energetic! It should be easy to understand and fun to work through. The feel of the book is happy and energetic.

Confirm the format and size of the book

A5 (210 x 148) portrait or landscape.

Checklist before thinking about the design

• Target audience: young children and their parents
• What kind of text will be included: cover text, introduction text, contents, recipes, fun facts, additional information and contact information.
  • Where and how to source images: I am going to photograph and illustrate my own visuals. That is the plan, which is ambitious.
  • Establish a colour palette that will run throughout the whole booklet: I havent decided this yet, but I will fill in this information when the design decision is made.
• Which parts of the text need to be emphasised: I will work with headings, subheadings and content look with hierarchy in mind. Also I want to use the rule of thirds in my design to lead the viewer through the text.

– CDH