How to explain the design of the four-year-old?

Original author: Dean Vipond
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I recently came up with an offer at a local elementary school. I wanted to talk with the children about my work, tell them some design basics, maybe teach me something.

I planned to talk with older children, to tell what I thought was really cool in my work, to share some interesting experience, but in the end I was asked to conduct a lesson with the students of the preparatory group (about 4-5 years). Despite the fact that at first I was rather disappointed, it turned out to be a very interesting task!

The main feature of working with children of this age is that you can’t tell anything about the brands you worked with. Four-year-olds will not be enthusiastic about stories about working on Channel 4, BBC, and Disel. “I received BRIT awards, and even developed a website on which I received an imdb record!” - the children will not understand what I’m talking about. Therefore, it was necessary in the simplest terms to explain what I did and why it is so important. I thought: it would be great to show children design in all its forms.

What I've done?


I have long formed the idea that all forms of design are effectively associated with communication - whether it’s user interface design, industrial design or clothing design. I came to the conclusion that design is something simple to use and easy to read.

Then I explained that there are different designers: there are those who decide
how to increase the number of rooms and where to arrange doors and windows, there are designers
who create books that you read. There are still game designers who decide
how to make the Angry Birds game fun, and where to place the buttons so that it is convenient for us to play. Furniture designers, they determine what size the chairs will be
and how to make them comfortable.

I also noted the importance of the design of the toilet - we all use the toilets every day, and they should be the right size and comfortable to sit on, and besides, we should have easy access to paper. In response, I heard a lot of giggling and muttering the word “toilet”, want to get feedback and attract the attention of 4-year-olds? Talk to them about the toilets.

After that, we completed the yes / no exercise. I had a list of different things,
and the children had to answer whether the designers did this thing or not? We started:

- A puddle ("nooo!")
- A book ("yeah!")
- A squirrel ("nooo!")
- A car ("yeah!")
... and so on.


Now that the children have learned what design is, I need to explain to them what graphic design is.
I wondered how to make my explanation easy to understand. And after some time I came to a simple conclusion - we need to use colors, letters and drawings to help people understand something they don’t know. Phew! After a long career in which I had to build on comments about “coloring” and “creating things that look good,” I finally managed to get to the point. This wording turned out to be beautiful in its clarity,
I could even quote it on my business cards.

I started by asking the class: what color helps to understand that we have a faucet with hot water?

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After one child successfully said “red,” I asked them: why do we think red means “hot”? Why is it “hot” - this is red color? Among the answers of the kids flashed very good for their age: “Fire”, “Sun”, “Lava”. We found that people use red to mean “hot,” because it is associated with hot things. The same thing happens with blue:

- “Children, what happens blue and cold?”
- “Ice!”
- “Yes, sometimes ice can look blue and cold, that’s why Elsa’s dress from the cartoon is frosty blue.”


It's time to talk about the main thing! I myself am the father of two children, so I know that children at this age will not sit for long. My partner (an elementary school teacher), made some small books with color samples to give out to children, and asked the class to choose colors based on questions.

- Choose a color that reminds you of the night.
- Choose a color that makes you think about fruits.
- Choose a color that reminds you of Gruffalo! *


* The character of the book by the English writer Julia Donaldson is a furry and fanged resident of the forest.

Children answered the last question in different ways - most chose brown, but some children chose orange (the color of Gruffalo's eyes), black (the color of his tongue) or purple (the color of his spines). So the children began to realize that often there are many answers to questions related to design, and how color helps to feel different objects and things.

Then, we conducted another exercise, during which I gave the children a list of words that needed to be painted in a certain color. So they were able to demonstrate their knowledge in practice. The results were great!
A lot of red - for the word "angry", bright colors - for "sweets", green - for "grass". Then I asked the children why they chose these colors? And received very convincing answers! Of course, sometimes they chose the color “because I like it,” but this is also true :)

Typography


When we finished with color, I moved on to how the words themselves look. I told the children how the signs talk about important things and that the words should be easy to read. As an example, I showed the class a word printed on a sheet and asked the children - what can I do with this word to make it clearer?

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The children replied that it was necessary to make it larger. I showed them this word larger and we agreed that this makes the word more important and it can be seen from afar.

I told the guys about what you can do with whole texts and individual words so that they are easier to read. We talked about their favorite books and the fact that words are used always and everywhere to tell stories and convey important information. As an example, I showed them a simple sentence, which we all read together:

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And then I showed the same sentence, but with the highlighted word “big”: The

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children agreed that this makes the sentence more exciting. We pronounce the highlighted word already differently than last time and begin to wonder how big this dog was from this sentence?

In addition, I showed how you can make a series of changes in a simple word to feel its meaning again. I demonstrated all of the following iterations in turn:

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Each time, the children agreed that the new word was felt faster than the name given before.

Unfortunately, by this moment we did not have enough time. Although the plans included exercises to “design” the word using interesting color combinations and some visual tricks: for example, to make the word “holiday” using things that help children feel festive - caps, ice cream, cotton candy and so on Further.

I was surprised by two things: how easily most of the children understood what design was, and that they could easily express themselves with it. This experience is also useful for those who specialize in explaining something to an unprepared audience. I needed to talk with children in their language, explaining the value of my profession in clear terms and look at what I do from the side.

A week later, I gladly received the lesson material on the topics that we touched on last time. Most of the children were satisfied.

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