FMP - ONLINE JOURNAL
It’s no surprise that I want to keep on making my dolls for my FMP! I’m so excited to keep on working on them, and improve them to hopefully have a great prototype at the end of the year! As a reminder this is what I had done
17/03/20 - I had to rush back home because of the virus. I moved up my plane tickets because I knew the french borders were closing… Now I’m here, in lockdown indefinitely and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to keep on working on my dolls.
30/03/20 - So couple weeks in, I gave up on my FMP idea, even if it’s something really close to my heart, I will find another time to make the dolls. Now just can’t work, as I don't have access to the wood workshop. Instead I think I will work on a recipe book. It was my plan B idea last year for my FMP, and it’s a project I’ve been meaning to do for ages. I feel like it’s a really big project to tackle, especially at home with little equipment, but it also makes it FMP worthy in a way! I wouldn’t want to do a simple small easy project for my FMP. So this is going to require a lot of work but I really think it’s going to be worth it. I also think it’s the best thing I can do during this quarantine, as cooking is for me a way to stay creative and to share with my family and friends. I have always loved cooking. I think during this whole situation it’s going to be a project that will work really well. I won’t just be a project I will do on my laptop in my room, but instead I will share the whole process with my family and spread the joy.
For some context, the cookbook is something I’ve been meaning to do for a few years now, but never really had the time to complete it. It all started when my best friend moved into a flat by herself and asked me for a couple of recipes. I made her a small handwritten cookbook so she’d have the essential recipes to sustain herself. Then my cousin, who is like a sister to me, moved out of her parents house and by herself. I felt like I wanted to help her also and promised her I would make her a cookbook. I started writing down some recipes and taking some pictures, but I was always in a rush, as I could only do this back home during the holidays because all my cooking equipment is here. So I never really made progress on it.
But now, as it is for my FMP, and more generally for school, I get to have a deadline and I know I will be productive. Plus I’m stuck at home which is perfect because I have all the equipment I need here.
05/04/20 - So during the “holidays” I’ve done a few recipes and taken some pictures. I’m happy because I get to experiment with food photography. I’m quite happy with how they turned out
16/04/20 - After thinking about the project and talking with the tutors I decided to make my book a mix between pictures and illustrations, to make it more fun and personal. I want to add on some little fun facts. I don’t want to make it aesthetically like an influencer cookbook or anything. I want it to be sweet and personal, something I can share and gift to my friends and family.
I’m wondering if I should do two versions: one english and one french. I’m trying to think of a way to combine both languages in one version? I considered making it sort of universal but then it’s going to be too different from what I wanted to do. I think I might just do it in french to start and see if I make it in english afterwards.
22/04/20 - I started doing a model/mock up of the book, just to try and figure out the layout. I think I will try to make it as “crafty looking” as I can, while still keeping it sleek and clean. Once I have a handmade version of it I can scan it and print more copies. But I quite like knowing there’s an original version. It’s been very helpful to make a mockup to visualise what I had in mind and see what’s lacking and what I need to improve on.
29/04/20 - So a week just went by without me doing much progress on this project… The confinement sure has ups and downs and this week was mostly downs. I’ve had to deal with a lot of issues related to my flat in London, having to move out in a rush and trying to find the right removal company. This has taken most of my energy and given me little to no time to work on my cookbook. But I will keep on being motivated and hopefully everything will run smoothly from now on! I just can’t wait for my mind to be free of worries about issues like this.
1/05/20 - New plan. I have been stuck on the cookbook for too long now and I can’t get any good work done. I don’t feel like this is something I will be proud of presenting in a final degree show. I still like the idea and I would like to keep on working on it in my own time, but it’s just not FMP worthy in my opinion. This may be a bit drastic but I’m changing my project and working on another idea, even if I don’t have that much time left. I want to do a card game for children. In France we have that game called the “7 families”, where the goal is to collect all the card of each family. I’m thinking I could make it about my family and then it’s something to share with my little cousins.
3/05/20 - After giving it some more thought I think I shouldn’t make the game about my family. Even though it would be fun it’s lacking an important element to it. I think the game should have an educational purpose too. So my new plan is to make a game with 7 art families (painting, sculpture,…) and in each family you would have 6 different artists. That way the kids will learn more about art history while they play! I think it’s a great project to do as it ties in with my dissertation, which was about the importance of play and design in children’s development. It was complicated coming up with the concept, I had many ideas for the families at first. I thought I could do 7 different art movement for example but it was just not so functional in the end. I think I found a good alternative with having the different forms of art. Here is the list: 1) Painting 2) Sculpture 3) Literature 4) Cinema 5) Music 6) Architecture 7) Dance/Theatre
I’m still a bit unsure about my last family, I don’t really know which artists to add inside but we will see! For the rest I have managed to find different artists that have different styles so that kids can recognise them from a visual.
7/05/20 - I’m happy my tutorial went well! I have lots of ideas and will try to see what to add, what to keep, and what to let go of. I think it would be fun to play around with the packaging, and to have maybe different compartments to put the different cards away. I’m thinking I could have a few “dare” cards for the losers to make the game more fun. And I could have some blank ones for each player to fill them up.
EXTRACT FROM DISSERTATION RESEARCH :
Montessori explains that children have an “absorbent mind”. They are capable of integrating what surrounds them to build their personalities.
“The function of play in childhood has been essentially misunderstood in the past. Surprising numbers of people still maintain that the primary function of play is to ‘let off steam’ so that the child can return to the more important business of study and learning. Countless studies of how intelligence develops in children show that precisely the reverse is true - that play is the way in which children develop intelligence. To simply put it, play is a child’s way of learning.” (Dattner, p.23)
“Training and psychology help us understand the child’s need for play. The interplay between child and adult in play experiments - the warm atmosphere, where the adult uses all available aids to meet the child’s need for development in play - are the fertile soil of play itself. (…) No playroom - tools - materials - offered to children by adults will fulfil their function unless adults, by their attitude and manner, show an understanding of the spirit and substance of the play”
“Adult influence on play is one way in which a society transmits its values and prepare children to participate in the adult world” (Dattner, p.18)”
I find these quotes particularly interesting and adapted to the subject. I have demonstrated through my dissertation that children learn better while playing with the right adult interventions. Creating this game, or any game, is a process that adults do, and they pass on the product of their work to the children. It’s important for the adults in charge of the creation to understand how children learn, and be sure they are transmitting the right values. I think this game is a good example of transmission.
10/05/20 - As suggested I reworked on my colour palette after doing some research about colour theory. This is what I ended up with:
12/05/20 - I found this book I got a while ago that is full of little stories about influential women. It’s been really helpful for the artists selection to add some more women. Ideally I would have 3 man and 3 woman for each section. But in any case this has been helpful in teaching me more about the woman I’ll add in the game, such as Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Zaha Hadid, Nina Simone, … An idea for another game would be only influential women! (But that has been done before)
15/05/20 - So after more reflexion I think I need to drop the dare cards. I added them initially to add another level on the game and make it more fun to play, hence inviting children to play with it more (and to learn more about art history). BUT I think it’s not a great idea after all cause I can’t make an unlimited amount of dare cards, and eventually the players will run out of them and it will be too repetitive to see the same ones over and over again, and it might have the opposite effect of what I wanted in the first place, and make them want to play less. So I won’t be trying that hard to create a brand new game, the aim from the start was to redesign an existing game. It works just great the way it is already so I won’t try to complicate it. What I will do instead is add a little sentence at the end of the rules leaflet saying that as an extra rule the losers can get a dare such as “Draw your autoportrait in the style of Picasso”. And it’s the winner that will decide the dare, and they can get inspiration from the information booklet. That way I can still implement my new rule without modifying the existing structure of the game. Same about the packaging, I don’t need to make anything extravagant cause it’s a simple and straight forward game. I was very inclined from the start in having a fabric bag as the packaging. I think it would be great cause it’s more durable than a standard box, and it’s also more suitable for kids, cause you can just wash it if they colour on it. I’m designing a little logo to have on the bag and I think it would be great to have that embroidered on the bag. It’s just a detail but I think it’s a really important one. It also adds to the durable aspect of it, because most of the time the writings on a bag are just like glued on it and it’s easy to peel off. Especially for kids. So what I’m focusing on now is the selection of the cards because the real concept behind the game is really to pass on culture and knowledge to the younger generations. I’m getting some help from my brother, my parents and my cousins to select 6 good artists in each family. The struggle is is had to be kid friendly artists, famous enough and all have relatively different styles.
22/05/20 - After the tutorial I’ve reworked on my illustrations for some cards that were less appealing than the others. I’ve redone all my music family and I think they look great now! I will finish illustrating them and colouring the cards and then I can work on the rest. I need to have it all done by the end of the weekend so I can send to the printers on Monday, and have enough time for them to print, me to work on the online journal so once I have them printed I can take some pictures of them on a nice background and try to take some with my little cousins.
I have test printed the little leaflet for the rules. It’s all looking good!
23/05/20 - I finally got around to designing little icons for each family. I think it’s not only going to be a nice detail, but it’s mostly going to be great for the smaller children who can’t read yet, to be able to recognise which card is from which family.
DISSERTATION RESEARCH : In the past illustrations worked “as a means of enticing the illiterate to learn to read” (Rossi-Landi et al., 1981). Illustrations, especially nowadays, are filled with meaning. We live in a world where children see logos, ads,… They take in and understand so much visual material. So having visual aids in their learning space can be a way for them to understand the information better and faster. Moreover, illustrations have an undeniable universal quality, which makes them understandable and relatable to everyone, no matter their background.
The importance of illustrations in this game is not only aesthetic but very much a tool for children to memorise the artist’s name better and improve their knowledge in art history.
24/05/20 - Now that everything is finished for the front, I’m spending the day on the pattern. The struggle is finding a way to have all the colours on the back (cause they all serve a purpose for learning), but without it being too crowded.
Final result will be this one! After hours of work on it I think this is the perfect one.
27/05/20 - Just came back from the printers with my cards! I am not pleased with who they turned out… I mean I’m very happy they got done much faster than I thought, but the printers I went to weren’t specialised in playing cards so the final product looks a bit dirty. The edges are brownish because of the laser cut and the corners aren’t as rounded as I wanted them to be. But it’s all good, at least I’ve got my cards and I can take some pictures with them in a nice set up, to show the content of the packaging. And I can always clean them up in Photoshop afterwards! If all fails I’ll also add some mockups just to be safe and show how it should really have looked like!
30/05/20 - Today I went to see my cousins to take pictures of them playing the game. They loved it I’m really happy it was successful. I’m going to go over the pictures and select a couple for the presentation! I’m excited it’s all starting to come together.
500 WORDS - SPMP - Louise Del Tedesco
Direction/ Pathway chosen : 1 - Adapting I have decided to adapt my original FMP idea, which was a personalised construction game for children, where they could create wooden dolls representing people they admire. As I didn’t have access to the wood workshop, I decided instead to make a card game.
WHO IS IT FOR? Children aged 5+
WHAT IS IT? It’s called the 7 families. The game is very famous in France, and it’s a simple and straight forward game. The aim is to collect cards from your opponents in order to complete each family and to collect as many families as possible. In my version each family is a form of art (painting, sculpture, music, …) containing 6 different artists. Each card has a visual of the artist, in order for kids to memorise them better.
The content :
- A deck of 42 cards
- A rules leaflet
- An information booklet
- A bag/ Packaging
The 7 art families:
- Painting
- Sculpture
- Design
- Music
- Architecture
- Cinema
- Literature
WHY? I decided on pursuing this idea as it felt logical to me to continue in the direction I had started to take with my dolls, which is to create a product for children. The game will look pretty and well designed, but the concept behind it is what really matters. The real aim of this game is educational: to pass on knowledge to children and help them learn more about art history and the artists who influenced it. I had chosen my dissertation’s subject to help me get a better foundation for my FMP/SPMP. For me it has always been important to study the theory behind children’s development and especially the role of Play and Design. Designing a product targeted for children needs to consider the way they learn and interact with objects, in order to make the end product efficient and pertinent, and not only aesthetic. The game could have been on many subjects, but I chose art history to share with the children in my family something that I am passionate about and have been studying for a few years. Even though it’s not a deep exposé about each artist, it’s still a way for me to pass what I’ve learnt to them. It also felt right to make a board game during this time of lockdown, as it’s an activity we could all do to stay busy. In order to help and facilitate the learning experience of the game, I have chosen a specific colour palette, mixing the warm tones to stimulate and attract attention, with some cooler blue tones for better focus. The back of the card pattern presents all the colours and is within eye level to be effective. Each family is a different colour but is also represented by an icon. That way the youngest children playing (5-6yo) that don’t quite know how to read yet can play without struggling to read the family’s name.
1/06/20 - FINAL THOUGHTS
Wow this project has been a crazy ride. I was so set on finishing a prototype of my dolls it’s been hard letting go of that plan and re-starting my project from scratch again. I’ve settled on another idea of mine, the cookbook, because it was comforting and easy, and it felt right. I think I needed some reassurance and choosing this project was the right move at the time. Then after a few weeks I realised it didn’t excite me, and I was blocked creatively. I felt guilty for not working more and unhappy when I was working. So another crazy decision, I changed my project once more, only a few weeks before the deadline (now talk about being more spontaneous!). And it all unfolded and got me in the right rhythm finally. I worked so much and got my project to what I wanted it to look like. I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved in those few weeks. And I don’t regret not changing sooner cause I got to learn more about food photography and try out new skills. It sure was the most challenging project of all of them this year, but I worked hard and achieve what I wanted. Of course there’s still room for improvement, I’m not super satisfied with the cards I printed, and there’s a few tweaks to work on, such as making some animated video like an add or something to add something else to the project, but I was running out of time… To be continued! But all in all I think I’ve managed this project well.