The Making of The Future is Make Believe
The Future is Make Believe is an anthology of stories written by kids. The concept for the book grew from our collaborative work with Laura Hamm, founder of Fabled, which started as a digital application where kids create and share stories, and has since developed into a movement to listen to, inspire and celebrate children’s creativity and storytelling.
An exercise we often find helpful involves thinking in quite lofty terms about what a brand, organisation or startup would like to achieve, what they should stand for, and what they should mean to people. For Fabled, this was easy: Laura wants Fabled to be a champion for kids’ storytelling.
(There’s a lot more depth and nuance behind the how and why, which you can read all about in Laura’s Medium posts.)
When we took a step back from the digital application that began the Fabled journey, and started to explore the broader concept — inspire, listen to, and celebrate the stories that kids are telling every day — we had lots of ideas for things we might do to support the overarching goals for Fabled.
The anthology idea really grabbed us. Imagining a beautifully illustrated book of stories by kids, for everyone, we felt that it hit the mark on several fronts:
- It celebrates the stories that kids write.
- (We hope) it will inspire kids (and grown-ups) to tell more stories.
- By taking the time to illustrate the stories, we show their authors that we’re listening carefully and paying attention. And by making this a book for everyone, not just for kids, we bring the stories to a wide audience.
- It can run as a Kickstarter campaign, to help fund the project.
- It has the potential to promote Fabled and encourage use of the digital application.
As the concept developed into a detailed plan, we had to resist a natural urge to complicate and get distracted by the endless other things that a book like this might be able to do. In practise, this meant remembering that this is all about the kids’ stories. The concept is simple and focussed — a book of stories by kids for everyone — so the book should be too: start with the stories, illustrate them beautifully, and emphasise the creativity angle by including quotes from kids about writing and creating.
To help fund the project, we decided that this might make a viable Kickstarter campaign. We mocked up spreads and illustrations for the campaign, and Laura worked on the campaign page and a video.
Kickstarter is all-or-nothing, and the anthology is a strategic part of the larger Fabled project, so to reduce the risk of the campaign failing, Laura made the wise decision to set the goal as low as she could afford to, hoping to just about break even on the book. After launching in July 2019, the campaign achieved over 20% more than its funding goal. 🎉
Having funding in place meant that we could get going on the design and illustration for the book. Loz came up with an initial layout for the spreads based on a first-pass selection of stories, and then the process was an iterative team effort between Laura, Loz and Jane Bowyer as Laura gathered and edited stories and quotes, Loz typeset and designed and tweaked the layouts, and Jane and Loz illustrated each story. I’ve covered that in a paragraph, but in fact it’s been a painstaking process over several months.
A copy arrived in the post a few days ago, and all that work has paid off and some. I read the stories, and saw the spreads and illustrations throughout the process, so I knew how well it was coming together, but there’s something special about the final product. The stories are wonderfully creative with a lack of self-consciousness that only children have, and the time, care and attention committed to illustrate each story individually really shines a light on them. It’s such a pleasure to read each and every story in the book.
Huge kudos to Laura, Loz and Jane. After Laura has taken some well deserved time to savour the achievement of getting this book shipped, I look forward to plotting next steps for Fabled — a great project with a brilliant founder, and we couldn’t have invented a better client for Fieldwork.
You can grab a copy of the book at the Fabled shop and find more images from the project on the Fieldwork website.
