Constellation PDP

Writing a pre-dissertation is not easy, specially when english is not your first language. It requires a lot of reading, researching and thinking.

The first challenge was to decide on a theme. Talking with tutors, I decided to work on something that I could develop when I come back to Brazil – since I’m only staying for one year, I won’t do my final dissertation here, although my university has a similar process and therefore I can continue the work I’m doing here.

One of my passions in Graphic Design are books. One of my passion hobbies is illustration. And one of my life passions is Classical Music. As I really enjoy creating drawings for children, I thought about uniting all these passions in one final artwork: a picture book about classical music.

In the beginning I was conflicted between creating a book or an app – since the last one is more fashionable nowadays. However, after discussing with the tutor, I got to the conclusion that the book would still be more useful, as in Brazil we do not have as much access to this kind of technology as here. The big aim of this project is to bring music to children that normally would not have access to it – and unfortunately they also usually don’t have access to tablets or smartphones.

Defined that, I started my research. On one of the first tutorials, the tutor indicated the book Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. It was very helpful as a starting point – it helped me understand better what several ways we can interpret music through visuality.

After that, I went to the Central Library in town to look for some books, and found a lot of interesting bibliography for children’s illustration. The book Illustrating Children’s Books: Creating Pictures for Publication gave me a real notion of how to create a picture book, from the first sketches to getting published. The examples really got me inspired to continue on this work.

But there was still something missing: I needed to understand how infants learn music, to eventually create not only the illustrations, but the book content. Using Summon, I could find several journal articles about musical picture books and a book that will be the theoretic basis to structure my final artwork: Music, Mind, and Education.

Meanwhile, we had a group tutorial, where we tried to identify who had similar projects to gather together and discuss in groups. My project was really the most different of all, and it didn’t actually fit in any group. But it was really interesting to see what other students are planning for their dissertations – so many interesting themes!

Reading all this books and articles was not an easy task, but I am glad that I did. Together with the tutorials, they gave me the basis to continue my work and go through the proposal. Besides that, they gave me a lot of new ideas for the artwork itself.

So, I opened the word document and started writing. I admit that I had to ask google translator, as the right words came in portuguese sometimes! But it went better than I expected. It took me a couple of weeks to put everything together, and with almost everything completed, I went to my last tutorial.

For my happiness, the tutor really liked what I wrote! Of course I was afraid, asking myself if I had done the right things and if my english was good enough. But these were really good news!

I only had three things to do: fix the title, fix the reviews and do some visuals. The title – An Illustrated Children’s Book About Classical Music – was too descriptive, so we got to the conclusion that it would be better if it was: “Synaesthesia, Music and Illustration: A Children’s Picture Book About Classical Music”.

The reviews were too much a summary of the books, and I had to analyze them more in relation to my dissertation themes and to each other. Done that, it was time to do some visual work. So, I researched similar books and illustration references. I even bought a really nice children’s book, called Listen to the Birds: An Introduction to Classical Music. And, to finally finish my work, I did my first ideas sketches.

It was a lot of work! But it was worth it. With this proposal as a basis, I will be able to develop my idea in Brazil and hopefully produce a successful final dissertation. There still a lot to research and to decide: the content of the book, style of illustration, suitable age etc. Anyhow, I feel very confident about it and I believe I am on the right way, thanks to the tutorials and the research I have done.