ANALYSIS OF THE FINDINGS A REFLECTED IN THE PRODUCT RANGE
6.1 Children’s cloth-pasted book
6.1.2 Design of children’s book Graphic design
137 Figure 6.5
“Big Five” characters’ sketch (Li, 2012:48)
6.1.2 Design of children’s book
these designs. Photoshop is programmed in such a way that an image is made up of a mosaic of individual coloured pixels; it gives me the freedom to edit and manipulate drawings and photographs. Illustrator creates a graphic image from a series of points, lines, curves and shapes. High-quality artwork and graphics can be created with the wide range of drawing tools on offer (Melanie & Ceri, 2009:40). The fonts were worked with Illustrator, and the final outcome is very pleasing and appealing to children as the representations of the characters and text have stamped the storybook with a delightfully quirky and enchanting style. The English font design has also been embellished with geometric patterns and motifs as a reminder of the themes of traditional culture, shown in Figure 6.7.
Figure 6.6
Chinese embroidery pattern design (Li, 2013)
Table 6.1: Main African and Chinese pattern designs
139 Figure 6.7
The font style of the book (Li, 2012:48)
The story
Long Long and “Big Five” are friends, and his eleven brothers and sisters came from China to South Africa to meet “Big Five” on a safari. Long Long introduces his twinborn brother Snake to Rhino, “Nice to meet you, let’s play together!” said Rhino amusedly. Rat introduces his brother Ox to Buffalo, and he said, “Look, their heads all have two horns!” Rabbit is playing with Tiger and Leopard. She said with a smile,
“Look, they look alike!” Elephant let Horse and Sheep sit on his back, as he shows the beautiful view to them. Dog and Pig make friends with Lion. They become the best of friends. Figure 6.8 illustrates the story.
(Page 1-2)
(Page 3-4)
(Page 5-6)
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(Page 9-10)
(Page 11-12) Figure 6.8
Graphic design in the book (Li, 2013)
The pages were printed using a digital printing technique and finished in Shanghai.
Digital printing produced the book graphics in vivid colours with strong sense of hierarchy. This also reduced the chromatic variation. The material of the book page is white polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a sustainable material; currently being used in contemporary production processes (Rob, 2013:174). UV-coated technique was used on the surface of pages, which it did not only provide a gorgeous graphic vision for
children, but being waterproof also gave the book a perfect protection (shown in Figure 6.9) (Vezzoli, 2007:136). The book was bound using the “butterfly-mounted”
technique. Figure 6.10 shows the details of it. This binding technique hid the spine crack and leveled off both sides of the book neatly.
Figure 6.9
UV-coated technique of book (Photograph, Li, 2013)
Figure 6.10
Details of butterfly binding technique (Photograph, Li, 2013)
Textile design
The book’s cover is made from my own fabric design, using the digital textile printing approach. The digital printing of textiles grew out of reprographic technologies originally developed for signage and paper printing, and today it provides the same
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business of paper and streamer (Melanie & Ceri, 2012:12). Initially, I used hand screen printing technique to print some African Adinkra patterns on the product felts.
The silk screen of this technique is made by stretching a fine, porous mesh over a frame. The design on the screen is then delineated by masking out areas of the design that will not be printed, leaving areas open for each colour, through which the ink is pushed using a rubber squeegee. The design that has been transferred onto the screen is laid out as a repeat pattern (Melanie & Ceri, 2012:169).
During the design process, traditional African and Chinese motifs and symbols inspired me to create my own patterns. I wanted to print these patterns in different colours on the fabric of products. However, screen printing requires that a separate template for each colour be made, and for the design to then be built up in stages as each colour must be laid down separately. The number of colours is limited by the practical considerations; hence I considered the technique of digital printing is the best way to print my design pattern. There is actually no limit to the kinds of designs that can be exactly reproduced using inkjet technology. The inkjet technology ensures continuous flow and drop on demand (DOD) two categories. In turn, DOD technology also has two subcategories: thermal and piezoelectric (Melanie & Ceri, 2012:172).
Piezoelectric DOD inkjet technology is accurately the basic approach for the digital printing of textile and is also used in my fabric production. The printed fabric book cover is shown as in Figure 6.11.
Figure 6.11
The printed fabric book cover (Photograph, Li, 2014)
On this book cover, I used the traditional Chinese cloth-pasted and hand-embroidered stitching techniques to make Long Long cartoon stand out of the fabric, seen in Figure 6.12. The tiny dropped patterns and four little blocks were embroidered which flattened made the hem of fabric, shown in Figure 6.13.
Figure 6.12
Long Long on the book cover (Photograph, Li, 2014)
145 Figure 6.13
Embroidered details of the book cover (Photograph, Li, 2014)
The making process of the Long Long cartoon involves five steps, as seen in Figure 6.14. They are the following: 1. Draw the shape of the Long Long cartoon on the plastic paper and cut off, and then cut the horns, cap, eyes, beards, cheeks, mouth and tail separately. 2. Paste these parts on the different coloured felts and cut them out. 3. Cut the shape of Long Long cartoon with felt and paste other colourful felted parts overlapped on it. 4. Embroider the eyebrows, nose and hands. 5. Stitch this cartoon on the fabric book cover.
Figure 6.14
The making process of the Long Long cartoon (Photograph, Li, 2014)
The book mark (Figure 6.15) also used Chinese cloth-pasted and embroidered stitching techniques. It was made from the embroidered ribbon and the felted head of Long Long cartoon. The chosen felt type is included in the needle felting, which is done with special needles that have barbed ends (Teller-Loumagne, 2008:27). The felt is used widely in children’s products because its texture is soft, cosy and inviting. It is alsoenvironmentally friendly. The embroidered ribbon used the satin stitches while the cartoon’s head used the blanket stitches; these embroidered stitches are shown in Figure 6.16.
Figure 6.15 The book mark (Photograph, Li, 2014)
147 Figure 6.16
The satin and blanket stitches (Photograph, Li, 2014)