BRIEF 04_MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD The Brief
V & A MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD PRESENTS
A FRAMED NARRATIVE A COLLECTION OF CHILDHOOD MEMORIES CONTEXT:
Welcoming over 400,000 visitors through its doors every year, the V&A Museum of Childhood in London’s Bethnal Green houses the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection of childhood-related objects and artefacts, spanning the 1600s to the present day. The Museum’s exhibitions and displays explore a broad range of subjects relating to childhood, from design, photography and fashion, to play and social issues.
THE BRIEF:
The brief is to design a publication that encompasses the content of a proposed exhibition curated by the Museum of Childhood. The proposed exhibition will focus on Childhood memories. The publication should display/give an idea of what the exhibition is and should basically look to sum up the content of the exhibition in print format. In terms of distribution the publication would either be sold in the museum shop or be given out as part of the exhibition.
INITIAL IDEAS My initial idea was to focus on proposing an exhibition that was based on the theme of childhood toys. I thought in terms of visuals this would be good to work with and the contrast of childhood toys from the sixties to modern day would of been a good area to look at. I wanted to look at peoples favourtie childhood toys and collect a bank of drawings/images. Each toy could be connected to a specific memory or time in that individuals childhood. The idea was to bring all these toys together as a collection in a book from a broad age range of people, each one telling a story.
CONTACTING THE MUSEUM
VISITING THE MUSEUM
After developing my idea and ways in which I could get research I sent this email to the museum to see if they could contribute to collecting visuals for the project.
I took a trip to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green to gather some visual secondary research. This was good in terms of getting an idea about the collections and exhibitions they hold, collecting visual research to inspire ideas/designs and to look at the museum in general to get some background information etc.
Hi, My name is Kathryn Brooks and I’m currently studying BA (Hons) Graphic Design at Leeds college of Art in my final year. On our course this year we have been given the task of writing up all our own briefs to cater for our own personal interests and design direction. Im from London and would often visit the museum as a child. For one of my briefs I have included the museum as a main focus, looking at creating promotional material and some form of a museum guide. This work is obviously for educational purposes only and will only be assessed as part of my work in final year and will not be distributed. As part of my research and visual development I was hoping to collect a number of quick (two minute) A5 sketches of peoples favourite childhood toys, they wouldn’t have to be drawn well at all, this is just part of idea development and collecting visuals. I was hoping to get a variety of ages to take part as this broadens the results and also shows a small history of childhood through the years. I was wondering if it was possible to get some of the children from your learning programmes to take part at the beginning of a session and just quickly draw up their favourite childhood toy/possession? I understand you are busy and the museum may not be able to contribute to my research but any help would be really appreciated. Thank you for your time, I look forward to hearing from you. Kathryn Brooks
Dear Kathryn, Although I organise the schools programme, it is not possible for me to approach individual children from a school group with a request for a drawing. However, I do have some small ‘thank you’ drawing of toys that have been sent to me by a visiting KS1 class and which you are welcome to access. I will copy this email to a colleague who may be able to help. Regards Carolyn
BRIEF 04_MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD Research
BRIEF 04_MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD Developing ideas
COLLECTING PRIMARY RESEARCH I started collecting drawings of peoples favourite childhood toys, I thought it was important for the individual to draw the toy as I was going to use specific drawings as part of the publication design. It was interesting to look at all the drawings I had collected and see the contrast in childhood toys from the sixties and even before that, to modern day toys.
PHOTOGRAPHY Whilst my idea was developing I thought about promotional materialthat could be used to promote this proposed exhibition. I collected some childhood toys, in terms of design aesthetics I thought old fashioned toys would work better. These are the initial photos for creating some sort of promotional material for the proposed exhibition.
BRIEF 04_MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD Primary Research
CHANGE OF IDEA
COLLECTING PRIMARY RESEARCH
I had a slight idea change when looking at what I had done so far and where I could go with it. Instead of proposing an exhibition that focuses on childhood toys I wanted to look more into childhood memories. I thought this would be quite an interesting concept, to gather a collection of childhood memories and hear the interesting range of memories. When I visited the museum childhood toys were a big focus point and so I wanted to bring something slightly different to the museum, memories would be the new direction.
I collected over forty childhood memories from a broad age range to get a contrast. This would form the content of the publication, this would be the theme of the proposed exhibition.
BRIEF 04_MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD Design development
CONCEPT MOCK UP / TEST PRINT I was struggling with the front cover for this particular brief as I didn’t know quite how I wanted to display the exhibition on the front cover of the publication. I thought it was important that the cover featured a small passage of what the exhibition was about, putting the book into context. I wanted the cover to be quite simple and consistent with the design on the inside pages.
After collecting the memories, which will form the content of the publication, I had to think of a design style/visual content. Initially I was having trouble with what I could use as visuals for this publication as I wanted to move away from photographs as this was something I’d used heavily in quite a few briefs. My new idea came from looking through photographs, I had a few frames and thought when scanned in they could look quite interesting. After scanning a few variations in I quite liked the look of them and thought this could be used. I was having trouble giving the imagery some context though as surely a frame without a photo doesn’t link very well to the idea of childhood memories. I then thought of a concept which would work quite well and decided to call the exhibition a framed narrative. frame narrative noun 1. a secondary story or stories embedded in the main story. 2. a narrative providing the framework for connecting a series of otherwise unrelated stories. 3. a literary device that uses such a narrative structure. A story within a story, within sometimes yet another story I thought this was perfect for the title of the exhibition as it fits the visual perfectly but the meaning/definition works really well. it works on two levels, the first being a story within a story, the exhibition has multiple stories within the exhibition which is a story in itself. And the second being the narrative of the exhibition connecting a series of otherwise unrelated stories.
When in the crit I asked whether there should be any visuals on the front cover as I was quite aware that I didn’t want to keep repeating the same visual frames throughout the book. The general feedback was that there should be some sort of colour or visual on the front. After discussing ideas I came up with the idea of a belly band that featured a few empty frames as imagery. I thought this probably worked best as it allowed me keep the front cover quite plain and simple which is what I had intended but also allows a bit of colour and aesthetic of the outside appearance without being psychically printed.
TICKET DESIGN I thought that to give some context to my work and to allow the publication to be more realistic I created some museum exhibition ticket designs. I think this just allows the brief to have more context and when photographed will add to the overall images. I looked at examples of other exhibition tickets, especially those from the V&A to see how they were laid out to try and make mine look as realistic as possible. I wanted to keep the design simple and in keeping with the publication design for consistency. All important and relevant information about the exhibition features on the ticket, after looking at other tickets and highlighting what need to be on and what isn’t necessary. When first designing the ticket I wanted to include a visual and thought using a frame could be quite nice depending on positioning, however I thought for the ticket design the simpler the more realistic and as I wanted to create a belly band for the publication featuring the set of frames I eventually decided against any visual.
BRIEF 04_MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD Final Products
‘Even though our lives wander, our memories remain in one place.’