Study Task 2

This illustration by Helen Oxenbury is from the well renowned children’s book; ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”. The page depicts a father and his children going on an adventure. As advised in Bruce Mau’s ‘An incomplete manifesto for growth’: they ‘Avoid fields. Jump fences’.

This illustration disagrees with the statement that illustrators ‘have flogged their skill and imagination’ to sell universal products such as cat food and detergent like it’s stated in First Things First (1964). ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ and a lot of children’s books are illustrated in a way that will inform and teach a child, and also provide an opportunity for family members to spend quality time together. A large percentage of children’s books require an imagination which First Things First (1964) manifesto so unfairly suggests designers / illustrators have lost in order to make money.

First Things First (2000) is even more aggressive with its views on how illustrators have supposedly given in to consumerism which Helen Oxenbury has not. She disagrees with the point that ‘Commercial work has always paid the bills but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This in turn is how the world perceives design. The professions time and energy is used up manufacturing demands for things that are inessential at best.’ Illustration works on all kinds of platforms and products; it’s not necessarily selling out.

This children’s book teaches children that all can and must be confronted, and together you can get through it. The book describes and illustrates the obstacles the family face using sensory descriptions such as: long, wavy grass, a deep, cold river. By using a range of descriptive vocabulary, the child can learn, engage and imagine. Children’s illustration also requires and allows the designer to use their creative imagination. The story using repetitive language patterns such as ‘we’re going on a bear hunt, we’re going to catch a big one’ along with similar illustration compositions on each page. This supports Mau when he say’s ‘if you like it, do it again’. Working on a children’s book also allows for ’collaboration’ between the author and designer in order that the text is depicted visually in a way which fits the story and style the author envisages. Mau also cites collaboration, despite its difficulties, as a growth element for designers.

Poyners theory from the First Things First (revisited) manifesto is that ‘we have absorbed design so deeply into ourselves that we no longer recognize the myriad ways in which it prompts, cajoles, disturbs, and excites us. It's completely natural. It’s just the way things are’. On a number of platforms, that statement is true. We are now surrounded by so much design that we sometimes do not appreciate it. However with a children’s book illustration, it is hard not to appreciate the skills and processes involved in its construction, even if a child is not aware of design principles and processes they are aware of what engages them in their story books. As this book is so well known and a best seller since its first edition in 1989, its clear people still find it visually engaging.

The chosen illustration has contrasted with most of the manifestos. It proves that illustrators still produce work for educational purposes and make work that’s visually engaging, because ‘what seduces us is its image’, a contradicting point by Poyner. There is this sense that the design world are selling out, but even though commercial work may not be meaningful, it still requires talent to seduce its viewer.