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ILLUSTRATION CONCEPTS IN VISUAL LANGUAGE
ILLUSTRATION CONCEPTS IN VISUAL LANGUAGE
Designed by Hotaka @ho_x007
PROMPT FLASHCARDS
PROMPT FLASHCARDS
Grouping the illustrations into multiple zines
Grouping the illustrations into multiple zines
The categorizing was referenced from the list of kanji divided per school year issued by the Japanese Ministry of Education that ranks the kanjis to be learnt in terms of complicity and Japanese primary students' year levels, which the same ordering also shows in the Japanese Kanji dictionary I referenced (considering the Japanese dictionary is one of the main materials my targeted learners being used)
The characters 磨 (miga(ku), polish) and 咲 (sa(ku), to bloom) are not on the list (but appear in the JLPT lists) so I categorised the two by looking at their other kanjis that often link with those characters that people mostly approach - where 磨 often links to 歯磨き (hamigaki, teeth brushing), 歯 belongs to a higher year level so 磨 will be intended to be introduced at the later zines within the series. Similarly one of my prompts made up for 咲 links to 桜が咲く, 桜 belongs to a higher year level to be learnt so 咲 was also introduced in the last category
This group order will be used for introducing the illustrated kanjis in the zines which there will be a collection of 5:
Group 1: 雨, 空, 月, 夏, 水, 楽
Group 2: 計, 考, 食, 星, 晴 切
Group 3: 止, 茶, 電, 冬, 道, 半
Group 4: 意, 飲, 泳, 急, 持, 暑
Group 5: 磨, 病, 死, 転, 建, 咲
This is how the prompts were planned to be designed in the 5 categories I grouped
Final grouping
Final grouping
The final grouping of the Kanji illustrations has been decided to be 5 instead of 6 Kanjis per zine due to production issues as they will be all printed on A0 paper stock horizontally for the printed document, as there was a lack of space for laying out 6 kanjis per row in groups (see table at right and printed document).
Prompt contents
Prompt contents
The Japanese prompts are made up considering the illustrated content of the illustrated kanjis, as mentioned the illustrations are provided as a hint for the learners to fill in the appropriate letter into the blanks of the prompts
For kanji characters that have multiple meanings, I attempted to cover the different meanings in a single prompt by offering a memorising method to the learners, for example, 月 can refer to month and moon, hence 毎（月）に一回、夜の（月）を見る, seeing the moon（月） during the night once per month（月）.
From past user tests, I also discovered learners can learn more kanjis and Japanese vocabulary aside from the illustrations through my prompts, so it is important to include the English meanings for the kanjis and vocab that are introduced within the prompts while designing the zines
A draft of how the prompts going to be studied by the learners and the printed document of the zines and prompts cards:
PRINT READY DOCUMENTS (for physical mockups)
PRINT READY DOCUMENTS (for physical mockups)
PROJECT UPDATES
PROJECT UPDATES
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
The updated project deliverables will be:
Primary deliverable
A Japanese Kanji learning material series consists of 6 illustrated zines
Each zine pack consists of:
1 illustrated zine booklet with 5 illustrations with actual kanji characters and meanings (that learners can perforate them into flashcards)
5 prompt cards correspond to each illustration
1 answer guide, for the learners to check the answers to the prompts
1 instruction guide, explaining how the zine works for the learning process practised by learners
1 cover package
Secondary deliverable
Website consists of animated and still versions of illustrated Kanjis
Stickers
The reason why the deliverables of the website and animated versions of illustrated Kanjis have been deleted is due to this project is an illustration-focused design project, most importantly due to the limitation of remaining project time and my unfamiliarity in the domain of digital publication and frame-by-frame animation.
AUDIENCE
AUDIENCE
There is a majority of N4 Kanjis than the N5 Kanjis looking through what I have visualised. As learned in the previous presentation, the zines should be designed targeted at the learners who are already equipped with sufficient basic kanji knowledge.
Hence the Kanji selection did not focus on a lot of kanjis that are really simple in their structure and meanings especially since the targeted learners should already understand.
It has been decided the zines will be targeting Japanese intermediate learners but since my project should be focusing on the ones who are already engaged in learning kanji, assumed that they have sufficient and basic kanji knowledge which are mostly N5 kanji -> so intermediate to upper intermediate level to be precise
I also assume the visualised versions of my work could help them deepen their memory through my design attempt in lead to deeper engagement in learners before reaching a much higher level that covers more complicated kanji, that this project could let them recall back to the intermediate Kanjis they might studied before
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