Books for children are rarely the topic of a design conference. Most people think of them merely as childish, colorful things. There is also a predominant stereotype of the typical children’s book author: a clownish-looking woman (certainly not a man) wearing hippie clothes with lots of kitschy accessories. This stereotype is derived from the books themselves – those ugly ones that are vomited all over bookstores around the world. And I’m not referring solely to aesthetics. The ugliness is rooted in the content. Meaningless stories that contain banal lessons showing a black-and-white world and trivial facts that every child already knows from school or the internet. One can argue that this is what a client wants. This is what kids like. This can be true if you think of a kid as an alien being who likes to ride unicorns galloping on rainbows made of smiling balloons. For us a child is an adult with less knowledge and a more open mind. Fortunately, there are more and more great books to choose from. At this point I would love to say that this was the reason why we started creating things for children, but that would be a stretch. We don’t have children, we don’t work with children and we have never had any experience in teaching them. We just wanted to make good books and games. For adults. In real life, as a fresh designer just one month after graduating from college, you’re not too picky. You will take what the world throws at you. And the first thing that hit us straight in the face was a commission for a book for children about contemporary architecture. We quickly discovered that making books for children is the best thing that a designer can do.
