Brave. Cool. Terribly Important.
Part 1: Moon
Last year I published a picture book called Moon — a story about what the moon does with herself when we fall asleep every night. Throughout the process of creating the book, numerous friends, colleagues, and mentors offered their critiques and encouragement. However, every so often someone would ask the question, “So what’s the lesson of this book?” With that being said, if you’re reading this article right now with the intent of learning “the lesson” in Moon, SPOILER ALERT: the book doesn’t really have a lesson in the traditional sense. Now, don’t get me wrong. Lessons are important. Cookbooks teach valuable lessons, and so do textbooks. But a children’s book about feelings and experiences? Nope. You see, I have a fascination with how we slowly become conditioned to crave meanings and lessons out of all that we encounter. I suppose it’s natural for all of us to attempt to make meaning of our lives, but on what criteria do we base such meaning? I’d argue that advertising and popular culture have a hand in this criteria, which then blurs or misconstrues the words “lesson” and “meaning” with myth.
Myth is kind of like a slippery, invisible, vaporous — and I can’t forget to say powerful — substance that appears to infiltrate any social setting it pleases and misleads us into embracing it as common sense or absolute truth. In case you’re wondering, my colorful definition of myth is in fact backed by evidence and critical theory. Roland Barthes, who wrote extensively on myth and popular culture, states that myth “consists of writing or of representations; not only written discourse but also photography, cinema, reporting, sport, shows, publicity, all of these can serve as a support to mythical speech” which provides us with a “natural image” of our reality or depicts life events as a “harmonious display of essences.” So with that in mind, I felt it was my responsibility when creating Moon to choose my words and images carefully and avoid preaching any myths disguised as life lessons to children. But first, I conducted a study.
After reading an article published by the American Psychological Association in 2008 which stated that by the time a child enters first grade, they can recognize over 200 logo brands, I wanted to see this phenomenon for myself. I conducted a study with children between the ages of 2 and 5, where I had them attempt to identify 15 logos from popular children’s movies, television shows, toys, and fast food restaurants. The logos were printed on flashcards to make the study feel like a game and I simply asked the children, “What does this say?” I also included 15 flashcards with the brands written in the Times New Roman typeface. The study was intended to be quantitative in nature as I was curious to find a correlation between logo recognition and literacy, but the children who participated threw me a qualitative curve ball. Whether the children recognized the logos or brand names, they had a lot more input to offer regarding the images and words presented to them. For instance, many prekindergarten-aged children made associations or told stories inspired by the flashcards. Here are a few of the qualitative results from the study:
Ellen Lupton, the curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt in New York City, defines a logo as “part of an overall identity program, which the designer conceives as a ‘language;’ that lives (and changes) in various circumstances.” Clearly, logos, especially iconic logos such as Disney, serve as abstracted signs that enhance and promote myths. Therefore, when we see a Disney logo, whether it be the abstracted Magic Kingdom or the three circles representing Mickey Mouse, we read much more than the denotative content, ‘Disney,’ as our brains swirl with other connotative messages like true love or happiness or dreams. Of course, there is nothing wrong with those connotations, yet when they’re cyclically mass produced for audience consumption, the entertainment takes on a new life of natural law, and our abilities to think critically and creatively slowly diminish.
The stories the children told me during the logo study, Barthes’ theories of myth, and Lupton’s definition of logos all inspired and informed the creative direction of Moon, where I embraced the abstraction of logos to create a moon along with illustrations that leave children’s interpretations wide-open. Therefore, the intent of Moon is not to preach a lesson, but rather provide a logo or medium through which children can speak and think critically, where interpretations and viewpoints are encouraged, and nobody is wrong, and, adversely, nobody is right. Without further ado, here is a little methodological crash course where I reveal the tricks I used to create Moon:
To learn more about Moon and Supermoons, check out my site:
… and stay tuned for Part 2 about my adventures of traveling to schools and recruiting young co-creating members to my gang, Supermoons.
