Last year I received the opportunity to work on a really great educational project. It’s called De Vreedzame School which translates as The Peaceful School. This is a complete program about social competence and democratic citizenship for primary schools. More than a thousand schools in the Netherlands are using this method to make their schools a conflict-resolving inclusive community. My job was to redesign the 300+ illustrations that had been made over 10 years ago. A sensitive task. I was lucky that Ineke Koene (the previous illustrator of this project, who I really admire) recommended me.
My client, the CED-groep, wanted the illustrations to be more modern, inclusive and suitable for different age groups. For me the best place to start was the redesign of the logo. In redesigning the logo I also wanted to make sure Ineke Koene was okay with the new look. That the design choices I made were different enough, even though I often had to show the same subjects and poses.
I thought it would be fun to show the designs and process I went through before ending up with the chosen design. The ones I’m showing below are not even all of them!
Satisfied with my last 2 illustrations I send these two to the client, eagerly awaiting feedback. There was a definite preference for the one with no line art (D). I couldn’t agree more. In the feedback the client preferred the kids to be a little bit older and also asked for a little more simplification.
Just a little more tweaking, a little older. I removed the shadow on the globe. The boy on the right got a hoodie (the pink sweater would make a reappearance on another boy 🙂 And so, the new logo was born.
I made so many illustrations. I can’t possibly show them all here. But you can check out some of the example lessons online, to see how some of the illustrations look in the new teaching materials. I may show some more illustrations in the next blogpost. All in all this was a great project with a lot of freedom. A special shout-out goes to my contact at CED-Groep Liesbeth Delgijer, it was a joy to work with her.