Water Doodle Mat brought Stan Agency an advanced illustration design challenge. The company sells coloring books, water markers, and coloring mats for children. The new coloring mat needed custom illustrations that appealed to parents and children alike.
Challenge Components
- Saturated market
- Kid friendliness
- Aesthetics
Industry Research
Amusement for children is a broad market; however, we researched it all the same. When looking at coloring products, we found that custom illustration was relatively standard. Additionally, we found that the industry moved more towards cartoon-based illustration design in recent years for its appeal.
Audience Research
While the final illustration design needed to appeal to children, it also needed to look suitable for parents. Parents are the individuals with the money to spend on the product, so we dug into their preferences. As it turns out, the open creativity of the product has a broader appeal to some parents than coloring books do.
Illustration Research as a Custom Illustration Firm
We did examine illustrations on competitor products. This market research conveyed trends towards a specific cartoon style in the illustrations themselves. The digging also included investigations into other custom illustration designs. From there, we were able to reduce the results to which trends we did not want to include in the final design.
Bonus Challenge
The dual audience was a challenge for this project. On the one hand, we needed kids to enjoy the illustration design so they would use it. On the other hand, parents are the ones with the money to buy the product. We needed to ensure that our graphic design illustration appealed to both parties so the coloring mats would fly off the shelves.
Brand Symbology
Water Doodle Mat uses a bright and straightforward brand across the product line. The overall effect appeals to parents looking for uncomplicated fun for their children, so we knew we wanted to match that closely.
Design Inspiration
Apart from the company requesting a dinosaur theme, we used illustration and graphic design principles for inspiration. We wanted to create a design that was just busy enough to be attractive, so we used all our research as inspiration as well. Additionally, we decided to use existing dinosaur concepts that match parents’ personal conceptions.
Element Decisions
Many of the decisions, such as which dinosaurs to use, w left up to our custom illustrators. Since the product uses water markers, we decided to include that element where possible. Additionally, since the markers in the product produce a rainbow effect, the team decided to try to incorporate as many distinct colors as we could coordinate.
Narrowing Down the Final Options
The custom illustration design team produced several amazing concepts. We began by eliminating designs we didn’t think appealed to the dual audience. Then we looked at how closely ideas matched the brand. From there, we did a few focus groups to help decide which designs were most appealing.
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