Research and Development

Children's Book

Teenage Book

An understanding and knowledge of ‘an audience’ can enhance and focus the communication.
Understanding the audience is one of the most important things to get a hold of in the design industry. It is a huge part of the project. The reason why it is so important is because you need to capture the age group/sex and keep them entertained and intrigued. This can be done in a variety of ways. Colour? Typeface? Size? Just to mention a few. You have to do the research and collect information/data. 
As you can see from the two examples I have above, they are very different. This is because they are targeting different audiences. The top one is targeting young children, you can see this by the bright colours used, fun little animals and by the type face. The bright colours will attract the young children and they will want to interact with the book, also the animals is a very clever idea, kids love animals, they would rather talk to a mouse than a human. Again all this is collected in the research, through doing questionnaires and trial and error. This type of research is called Primary Research (collecting fresh data).
The other book is targeting teenagers. There are no bright colours, no little animals. There is one image, an eye. This draws in the audience and leaves them wanting to find out more, this book is targeting teenage girls, its a female eye, also the typeface is too fancy to be for the males.
The main thing when you are considering your audience, are three questions.
Who are they?
What do they like?
What do they value?
When these questions are answered, you will no how and what to draw/photograph or design.

Jill Calder

The notion of ‘inspiration’ derives from constant inquiry, based on research, observation, recording and experimentation.

The key to a good artist is getting inspired. You have to do your research and look around. By collecting and documenting your inspiration/finds, you can come back to them at a later date. They will still inspire you but maybe in a different way. However, the only way to improve is to experiment, try new things, explore the different range of media. This is still classed as research called experimentation. You don't jump straight into your final piece, you have a beginning, middle and an end, with lots of ideas, developing them, getting inspired, working in the same way as an artist. Everyone has to get inspiration. All this research is called Secondary Research, this basically means you are collecting information that is already out there, for example, looking at books, the internet, galleries, flyers, anything you can get your hands on. To have a wide range of research, your design will benefit because you have looked into a lot of different things and got a clearer understanding of the chosen subject.

Jill Calder is an illustrator, she is constantly collecting Visual research, observational drawings. This helps her remember what she was thinking at the time. When you think of great idea, write it down on a piece of paper, your hand, some loo roll! Anything you get your hands on because you will forget. Its the same when you take a picture, draw something, its not going to be there forever so you have to act on it and all this is documenting your movements. Your journey through a project.