an illustration about global warming for children · an illustration about global warming for...

An illustration about global warming for children

Gözde Menemenlioğlu

Course Coordinator: Alessandro Segalini

IZMIR UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS, FACULTY OF FINE ARTS AND DESIGN DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION DESIGN

SPRING 2009, GD494

INTRODUCTIONGlobal warming is one of the major environmental issues the world is facing today.

In my thesis, I will explain what global warming is, analyze the state of children’s awareness according to the questionnaire I made and study graphic design and illustrations for children. We get more and more news about glob-al warming and climate changes on media channels. In the last 10-15 years cli-mate changes have given profound signals regarding the future of humanity. Global warming has already started to be a threatening issue like “pollution” as an important environmental topic. Thunder storms, high temperatures, melt-ing ice mountains, drought all play important roles in explaining the depth of the problem we are facing today. A number of advertisement campaigns, seminars and educational conferences have been organized throughout the country and around the globe. I believe that creating public awareness needs to be taken as a key priority in order to resolve this serious problem. Creating public awareness needs to start through childhood years; our kids at primary schools need to be educated on diverse topics such as climate changes, pollu-tion, factors leading to pollution and global warming.

However, waste materials, limited water resources, energy and harmful gases are distinguished better by kids. The sufficient education of children regarding these topics must be our primary goal. The results and the evalu-ation I have gathered from the questionnaire for kids were the reasons that led me to write scenario for this project. I have applied the first questionnaire for initial assessment in two different primary schools. Children have some concept figurations and perceptions regarding topics such as waste materials, pollution and global warming. My objective in doing this project is to cor-rect those wrong perceptions and emphasize correct visuals regarding these topics. I hope to reach this objective through making illustrations combining children’s thoughts and solid global warming figures. Characters like heroes and their colors, shapes, images take an important place for their comprehen-sive perception.

Finally, this thesis helps to strengthen their visuals and increase their enthusiasm for learning to change their perceptions of looking at consump-tion habits and global warming.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. WHAT GLOBAL WARMING IS

2. GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION CHILDREN

2.1. Typeface and Layout

2.2. Children and Art

2.3. Cognitive Develoment of Children

3. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN ON GLOBAL WARMING

3.1. What Children Know on Global Warming Today

3.2. Awareness of Children on Global Warming

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

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ii

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4

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5

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08-09 GD494 GRADUATION THESIS 2


1. WHAT GLOBAL WARMING IS

Global warming is a widely use term describing a potentially dramatic rise “in the annual average global surface temperature of the Earth”. It is estimated that the average temperature will increase from 1.5 to 4 degree celcius as a consequence of global warming. (fig. 1) If this sort of a temperature rise oc-curs, dramatic climate changes will be expected. A warmer world would give way to rainfall, rise in sea level and a wide range of impacts on plants, wildlife and humans. Consequently several natural catastrophes might occur, which might also cause extinction of certain species, including human beings.

There are several observational evidence for global warming in the last thirty years. In early1980s, global warming has come to a level that the world’s governments decided to take some monitoring action on this issue. For ex-ample, in 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 has been set up to gather scientific information about global warming and also to suggest response strategies. In the reports generated by IPCC, much of the evidence supporting the claim that global warming will occur gave rise to development of model evidence for global warming, such as computer based climate models.

Through these models, several institutions have been working on the possible impacts of the future climate change, as well as the options for change. These change options include models concerning health, agricul-ture, ecosystems, as well as models for adaptation, limiting the damage, etc. To sum up, all these models are developed, since expert scientists argue that technologically advanced societies are not immune to the changes that will be brought by global warming. Thus, it is argued that individuals should be informed about and should learn to develop a social awareness on this issue across and within societies.

Consequently, these intergovernmental policies on creating a social awareness on global warming have been carried on successfully for several years now. However, there has been almost no institution or social policies regarding creating this social awareness, starting from early years in life. By realizing this lack of policy on creating social awareness on global warming in children, we have decided to focus on the ways of creating a level of social awareness in primary school children.

Fig. 1. Global Warming

1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergov-

ernmental body tasked to evaluate the

risk of climate change caused by hu-

man activity. The panel was established

in 1988 by the World Meteorological

Organization (WMO) and the United Na-

tions Environment Programme (UNEP),

two organizations of the United Na-

tions. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel

Peace Prize with former Vice President

of the United States Al Gore.

Therefore, we will examine the relation among arts, children and their devel-opmental stages, and theorize on the ways to help them develop this aware-ness through design and illustrating in this thesis study.

2. GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION FOR CHILDREN

2.1 TYPEFACE AND LAYOUT

Page layout affects the reader in many ways. Any printed material provides the public with their first view of the design. Therefore, it should strike the public not only content-wise but also visually. Page layout production in-volves certain production parameters. Some of these parameters regarding printing quality can be the number inks available or the stock being printed on. Besides, one of the most important factors that plays role in affecting pub-lic are typeface and layout. Different typeface and layout affect children as well as adults. Thus, a designer should know and understand children’s tastes and expectations.

Generally, choosing font styles for your book is very important for both the aspect and transferring files for printing. The most classic fonts used for books are the Oldstyle2 fonts, as they are easily readable for large body copy. Among the most classics are Times Roman, Goudy, Garamond, and Basker-ville. In addition, designers should remember to choose a contrasting font for their headings. A sans serif font such as Arial is a classic choice, since it can be read easily. A sans serif font is one without the “hooks” at the ends of each letter. These “hooks” help show a way the children’s eye from one letter to another making the text easily readable. This is why sans serif fonts such as Arial should never be used for the main body of the text. Children’s books are commonly set in a slice of serif font, because of their clean straight lines. Some common Slice serif fonts are New Century Schoolbook, Classic SSK, and Clarendon.

Designers choosing typeface and layout for designs that are created for children should consider children’s cognitive and perceptual capabilities as well as their lack of experience in reading. Children learn to read letter-by-let-ter, they combine sounds with shapes and images until they can blend them together to form words. That’s why new readers follow on slowly. The shoots at new readers should be supported through making the text use attractive, easy-to-read typefaces, and setting the text in the most readable way. Legibil-ity is one of the main parts of children’s reading. When selecting a typeface for a children’s text, we should look for a warm, friendly, shiny and colorful designs with simple, generous letter shapes. The counters, which are the en-closed shapes within characters, should be rounded and open, not angular or rectangular. Non-traditional letterforms should also be avoided.

Typefaces with bigger word heights are generally easier to read than those with short word heights, and this is especially true for children. For very young readers, designers should select designs with one-story ‘a’s and ‘g’s , which are also called in font characters, since these are the lowercase shapes preschool and school-age children learn to write.


2. Old style or humanist typefaces date

back to 1465, and are characterized

by a diagonal stress (the thinnest parts

of letters are at an angle rather than at

the top and bottom), subtle differences

between thick and thin lines (low line

contrast), and excellent readability. Old

style typefaces are reminiscent of the

humanist calligraphy from which their

forms were derived.

Both the serifed Bembo Schoolbook and Plantin Schoolbook, as well as Gill Schoolbook, a sans serif style, have been designed for children. Making the text readable have some steps like new readers have to learn to follow words from left to right and “jump” their eyes from the end of one line to the begin-ning of the next. To make this easier and readable, designers should set the text large like14 to 24 point depending on the typeface and age of the chil-dren. They should also set the text very generously by using leading like 4 to 6 points. Designers should keep line lengths short, and not put too much text on a page. Thick blocks of type can be very minatory to children. Therefore, designers should avoid all cap settings, which are difficult for readers of any age.

Finally, designers should make sure there is an ample contrast between the type and the background. This is especially true when setting light type against a dark background (this is very common in heavily illustrated chil-dren’s books). When setting more than one paragraph on a page, designers should consider using line-spaces instead of indents to separate paragraphs. This gives the text and the reader a visual break. Headline or title type gives the designers the opportunity to be more playful in style, color and layout, since there are fewer words to read. Decorated typestyles, lots of color, and curved and jumping baselines can all be used to attract and entertain the young reader. Keeping it light and fun is the key to keeping a young reader interested.

2.2 CHILDREN AND ART

Various branches of arts constitute an important tool showing children’s per-ception on external world. Specifically art helps children to reflect their own understanding about the world. Studies on primary school children demon-strate that art is an important tool in order to inspire children’s imagination and perceptions on creativity. (fig. 2) On another note, studies on brain de-velopment of children show that children are sensitive to artistic stimulation and the influences of this stimulation is long lasting, since the connections among neurons in the developing brain of children lay a creative pattern for future learning (Kail, 2008). Thus, if and when arts are ignored during child-hood stages, a unique opportunity may be lost in terms of creativity develop-ment. Moreover, these findings show us that aspect of creativity in children’s learning gives us a specific opportunity in order to teach important topics, such as global warming, to them effectively.


Fig. 2. Children and Art

2.3. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN

This thesis mainly concerns developing a social awareness in children of ages 9 and 11, on global warming. In order to help children to develop this kind of social awareness, as designers, first we should know and anticipate the cogni-tive and perceptual capabilities of children in those age groups.

Developmentally, cognitive development is much more adult-like and much less child-like during early elementary stage (Jean Piaget, 1970)5. Jean Piaget is known to be the profound researcher who impacted every aspect of child development research. He has defined four stages of cognitive de-velopment as “sensorimotor”6, “pre-operational”7, “concrete operational”8 and “formal operational”9. Briefly, the characteristics of the sensorimotor stage is that the infant’s knowledge of the world is based on senses and motor skills. The infant uses mental representations and understands object permanence by the end of the period ,which is 2 years. In preoperational period, which lasts 2 to 6 years, child learns how to use symbols such as words and num-bers to represent aspects of the world but relates to the world only through his or her own perspective. During the concrete operational stage, which is between 7 to 11 years, the child understands and applies logical operations to experiences, given the fact that they are focused on the here and now. In the last stage which is called formal operational (from adolescence and beyond), adolescent children think abstractly, speculate on hypothetical situations and reasons about what may be possible using deductive reasoning.

We focus on two different age groups in this study; 9 and 11 year olds. (fig. 4) According to Jean Piaget’s theory on cognitive development, chil-dren’s thinking, perception, and reasoning capabilities demonstrate a dramat-ic shift during concrete operational stage. In children from 7-11 years, which is called concrete operational stage, “mental” operations are used for problem solving and reasoning. Some operations that are used by operational children are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Concrete operational thinking is more powerful than the previous stage, which is preoperational thinking, in the sense that preoperational children are egocentric, thinking that others see the world as they do. One limitation to concrete operational thinking is that it does not favor abstract thinking, focusing only on tangible, concrete data. This limitation to abstract thinking disappears during formal operational stage.


Fig. 4. Children Develoment

5. Sir Jean Jacques Piaget was a Swiss

philosopher and natural scientist, and

is well known for his work studying

children. His theory of cognitive devel-

opment and epistemological view is to-

gether called “genetic epistemology.”

6. The Sensorimotor Stage is the first of

the four stages of cognitive develop-

ment. “In this stage, infants construct

an understanding of the world by co-

ordinating sensory experiences (such

as seeing and hearing) with physical,

motoric actions.” “Infants gain knowl-

edge of the world from the physical

actions they perform on it.” “An infant

progresses from reflexive, instinctual

action at birth to the beginning of sym-

bolic thought toward the end of the

stage.”

7. The Preoperational stage is the second

of four stages of cognitive develop-

ment. By observing sequences of play,

Piaget was able to demonstrate that

towards the end of the second year, a

qualitatively new kind of psychological

functioning occurs.

8. The Concrete operational stage is the

third of four stages of cognitive devel-

opment in Piaget’s theory. This stage,

which follows the Preoperational stage,

occurs between the ages of 7 and 11

years and is characterized by the ap-

propriate use of logic.

9. The formal operational period is the

fourth and final of the periods of cog-

nitive development in Piaget’s theory.

This stage, which follows the Concrete

Operational stage, commences at

around 11–15 years of age (puberty)

and continues into adulthood. In this

stage, individuals move beyond con-

crete experiences and begin to think

abstractly, reason logically and draw

conclusions from the information avail-

able, as well as apply all these process-

es to hypothetical situations.

Unfortunately, by the age of seven or eight, which is referred as the magic years or the development for child art, children mostly lose spontaneity and artistic creativity. However, art and design play a salient role in development of emotional and aesthetic life of children and thus it should be supported by adults who are educators. Art and design constitute a form of communication for children. Child psychologists and experts argue that visual arts are im-portant and valuable, since they help reflecting presented content all at once, in an unprecendented manner. Through this, composition, shape, color, and relationships are presented to the viewer.

Primary school age children become capable of integrating the parts of the perceived objects. However, the lines they draw are mostly in a schema3

pattern. For instance, in a figure representing a human being, the head is shown as a circle, the arms and legs are shown by two vertical and horizontal lines. This stage of symbolic representation is called “stage of knowing”. Dur-ing the ages of 9 to 11, children reach the stage of “objective realism”. İn this stage, the schema pattern disappears, and instead, with objects and figures the details of personality are provided. Children become capable of under-standing and perceiving the third dimension of the objects around this age. (fig. 3) The sequence of the objects are represented within the same plan by children. At the same time, children become capable of understanding the relation among different plans following each other.

Finally, International Child Art Foundation (ICAF)4 state that:“Through artworks, children show their preferences and attitudes,

which in turn reflect their values and those of their societies. This load of art is instrumental for ICAF1 because of the foundations objective to promote global communication among childrens of all cultures through the univer-sal language of art and design. ICAF is aware that a proactively art-rich life is even more important today because children are influenced by high-tech graphics and special effects on television and websites and in movies and computer games.

We can conclude that art is an important tool in children’s life to foster their cognitive capabilities. We, as designers, should consider characteristics of children’s perception and cognitive abilities, in order to use art as an effec-tive tool in their learning.


Fig. 3. Children and Art

3. An image schema is a recurring struc-

ture within our cognitive processes

which establishes patterns of under-

standing and reasoning. Image scemas

are formed from our bodily interac-

tions, from linguistic experience, and

from historical context.

4. The International Child Art Foundation

was founded in April 1997 to serve as

the national art and creativity organi-

zation for American children and the

international arts organization for the

world’s children.

Formal operational stage extends from 11 to adulthood years, involves thinking that is more abstract like “what might be” and “what could be”. Questions like “what if men gave birth?” or “what if kids become teachers at school?” would confuse concrete operational children, however these same questions lead to hypothetical reasoning and deductive reasoning for formal operational adolescents.

Within the light of literature on cognitive development in children, we can say that our two groups of children (9 and 11 years olds) are within the same developmental stage. (fig. 5) Therefore, we as designers should con-sider that they have specific perception and understanding when they learn something new. Thus, we should develop our designs in accordance with the developmental characteristics of this age range.

Research on concrete operational stage children can be shown as an ex-ample for the necessity of using a specific form of arts in teaching to these age groups. The following statements reveal the importance of child art:- Child art has the power to improve academic performance by enticing stu-dents into the learning process because confidence and recognition achieved in art are reflected in other subject areas.- Child art leads to good work habits because painting and drawing involve concentration and cultivate self-discipline.- Child art involves creative discovery and self-expression because students learn how to address problems in innovative ways.- Child art lets adults know how children are growing, intellectually and emo-tionally.- Child art helps students understand their own as well as other cultures.- Children’s art makes free time enjoyable and meaningful for students.

Within the light of literature on children’s cognitive capabilities, we created a questionnaire examining children’s level of knowledge, and aware-ness on global warming. This questionnaire is aimed to figure out children’s knowledge and awareness on this topic, so that in the future we can design an age-appropriate project in order to foster children’s learning on global warm-ing.


Fig. 5. Children Develoment

3. QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILDREN ON GLOBAL WARMINGThe questionnaire on global warming includes seven questions, three are open-ended and four are multiple-choice questions. We directed this ques-tionnaire to two different age groups; 9 and 11 year old primary school chil-dren. We sampled out a total number of 51 students, 30 of them are eleven year-olds and the rest are nine year-olds. We collected data from Güzelyalı Ilköğretim Okulu, in June 2009.

Below, the original questions in the questionnaire are presented:

Question 1: What is global warming?Question 2: How important is global warming to you?a. In the extent that it influences meb. In the extent that it influences all peopleQuestion 3: Are you sensitive towards and aware of global warming?a. Yesb. NoQuestion 4: Below the possible problems that may arise because of global warming are given. Which one(s) concerns you the most?a. Many countries are faced problems in nutritionb. Natural catastrophesc. Problems on water resourcesd. Prevalence of epidemic illnessesQuestion 5: Choose the precautions that you personally take on global warm-ing.a. I am aware about reserving water consumption.b. I am aware about reserving electricity.c. I am aware about the cosmetics I use.d. I use paper bags instead of plastic ones.e. Other.Question 6: Write down the concepts and words that are related to global warming.Question 7: Has there ever been any global warming-related event at your school? If yes, what have you learned? If no, do you want such an event to happen, and why?

3.1. WHAT CHILDREN KNOW ON GLOBAL WARMING TODAY

In this section, we derived the answers to the open-ended questions on global warming (Questions 1, 6 and 7). We have taken the common themes that are provided by children in order to reflect their extent of knowledge on this topic. Below, common answers to these question are presented:

Common themes in answers to Question 1:- Using water and electricity when and if they are necessary to use.- Temperature rise and extinction of trees.- Pollution created by the harmful gases and in the ozone layer.- Hunger and thirst.- Effects of harmful sunray on earth.


- Earth becoming desert.- Icicles melting, rise in sea level.- Consumption of resources without awareness.- Shortage in rain fall.- Extinction of certain species.- Environmental pollution.- Unbalance in natural life.- Increase in epidemic illnesses.

Common themes in answers to Question 6:Sweating, increase in temperature, light, shortage of water, extinction of spe-cies, awareness in consumption of water and electricity, epidemic illnesses, natural catastrophes, earth becoming desert, polluting products, rise in sea level, being unaware about global warming, cosmetics, batteries, hunger, re-sources of water, plastic, sun, life, human beings, nature, environmental pol-lution, melting icicles, death, poverty, living things, atmosphere, ozone, oxy-gen, environment.

Common themes in answers to Question 7:Almost all 11 year-old children stated that they were informed on global warming. However, 9 year-olds stated that they did not receive a formal train-ing about global warming but almost all of them stated that they wish they could.

3.2. AWARENESS OF CHILDREN ON GLOBAL WARMING

In this section, we derived the answers to the multiple-choice questions on global warming (Questions 2, 3, 4, and 5). (fig. 6) We have calculated the percentages by using the answers provided by children in order to reflect their extent of awareness on this topic. According to these answers, the fol-lowing information is gathered:- 4% of children stated that global warming is important to them in the extent that it influences themselves, whereas 96% of them stated this importance to be in the extent that it influences all people. - 100% of children stated that they are sensitive towards and aware of global warming.


Fig. 6. Awareness of Children

- Children stated that shortage of water resources, hunger, natural catastro-phes and epidemic illnesses are the most concerning consequences of global warming, respectively. - Children stated that awareness on water consumption, awareness on elec-tricity consumption, awareness on cosmetics consumption and usage of pa-per bags instead of plastic ones are the precautions that they took, respec-tively.


CONCLUSIONIntegrating the literature on cognitive capabilities of primary school children, their level and way of understanding arts and their knowledge and awareness level on global warming has improved our understanding on the ways to fol-low for designing our projects about illustrating global warming for children. Regarding the cognitive capabilities and educational level of 9 and 11 year olds, we have concluded that these age groups reached the perceptual and cognitive threshold to understand highly hypothetical problems such as global warming. Below, we have described a hypothetical project design for illustrating global warming for children within the light of our thesis study.

We have thought about designing a social awareness project on global warming, which is called “Clean World Club”. The aim of this club is intro-ducing global warming to children by transforming its specific characteristics into specifically designed characters. These specifically designed characters are aimed to constitute heros for children by using designs which are visu-ally and content-wise effective for those age groups. In these terms, we can design characters with different shapes, colors, size, and names, which will be appropriate for those age groups perceptually. In addition, we can make these characters give messages to children, which are comprehensive for those age groups cognitively. These messages and slogans should be selected and used in a way that will attract their attention and lead them to develop a genuine enthusiasm. Because we know from the literature that, especially primary school children are open to be affected by a role model, such as a hero-character, in organizing their attitudes and behaviors. Thus, hero char-acters’ messages should be effective on creating a social awareness regarding global warming.

Finally, regarding choosing the context that children will be exposed to the designed hero-characters, the visuals which will be designed to attract their attention should be presented in the places that children spend most of their times, such as schools, social clubs, and even play-grounds. The ex-posure to these hero characters can be varied by using promotional visuals, such as brochures, stickers, posters, flyers, web designs, and other advertising channels and tools.

Within the light of our study, we concluded that a project like “Clean World Club”, which is specifically designed for primary school children, should be an effective way of developing social awareness on global warming in children.


REFERENCES

FRANCES DRAKE, Global Warming – The Science of Climate Change, (2000)

Dr. Resat Uzmen, Küresel Isınma ve Iklim Değişikliği- İnsanları Bekleyen Büyük Felaket mi?, (2007)

Dorothy Mackenzie, Green Desingn(For the Enviromental), (2005)

JIM KRAUSE, Layout Index, (2001)

Robert V. Kail, Children and Their Development – Fifth Edition

Pemra Saglikova, Primitif Sanat ve Cocuk Yaraticiliginin Cagdas Sanata

Kaynak olmasi(Yüksek Lisans Tez Konusu)

Kayıhan Keskinok, Sanat Eğitimi(Aşamalı Yöntem)

INTERNET REFERENCES

http://www.icaf.org

http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk

http://tiki.oneworld.net/global_warming/climate9.html


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