During my final year, one of the briefs that I chose to do was "Fear is good for you." For this brief, we had to work out "how do you promote fear as a healthy option to an already fear-ridden society?"
The questions, which we had to answer were:
Who will be your target audience?
What are they afraid of?
What should they be afraid of?
How do you make fear seem natural to an audience who only associate it with extreme states of panic?
Having brainstormed different areas of fear, I decided I wanted to research fear in childhood because the things which children are fearful of, are usually irrational and they have a completely different outlook on life. They tend to fear things, which they can overcome or their fears can be influenced by their parents.
Age 2 - 4:
Fear of animals, loud noises, being left along, inconsistent discipline, toilet training, baths, bedtime, monsters and ghost, bed wetting, disabled people, death and injury.
Age 4 - 6:
Fear of darkness and imaginary creatures, animals, bedtime, monsters and ghosts.
Beyond the age of 6, fear of darkness or being left alone and fear of animals tend to be common.
It's usually around the child's 2nd birthday, when they start developing fear and between the ages of 3 - 6, children sometimes confuse reality, dreams and fantasy. However fear is a normal part of development and fears such as fear of seperation is an indication of growth.
Therefore I wanted to created an aid to help parents show to their children that fear is healthy and a normal part of growing up, so I decided a children's book seemed like the right solution.
With this book, I wanted to present fear as part of who you are and that it's okay to be afraid because it means that you are growing up.
I decided on a story, which follows two friends on
their search for Big Foot. The two friends consist of Leo, who is scared
of everything, which is ironic since he looks kind of like a lion and Noah, who is brave. Since he was named after Noah and the Ark, I wanted him to be the leader of the two. However once they encounter a dangerous
situation in the woods, it changes everything! For once Leo is brave,
where as Noah runs away and when the dangerous situation is no longer a
problem, Noah's brave demeanor returns and he denies that he was scared,
but Leo doesn't believe him and tells him that it’s okay to be afraid.
For the book, I decided to illustrate all the images by hand, then scan them in to edit. Below I have included some of the original drawings from the book:
After sorting through the images, I researched some typefaces. I decided on Clarendon 24pt, because I wanted a slab serif that was easy for children to read. As well as it was going on white pages, so I wanted it to have a presence.
Once the layout was finished, I took the book to be printed and bound:
Unfortunately the images were pixelated and I wasn't happy with my book, so I had to redo all my images on illustrator (which I probably should have done in the first place.) After editing the book a bit, here is the finished result:
For more images of the final piece please visit: http://miss-pang.com/It-s-Okay-to-be-Afraid