How Pocket Tales Designs Badges

Yaw did a great write up of my design process when it comes to our amulets (or badges).  It’s interesting to see my process through someone else.  In my mind, there is often not a lot of pragmatic approach to visually depicting a concept.  I know that’s not the case, but when you are working at something you often don’t see a ‘phase’ of design.  For me, you design until it’s as close to done as you can get it.  Because nothing is really ever done.  Here are some highlights of Yaw’s post.

At Pocket Tales, we love searching for and discovering the best literature for kids and young adults. We also like to take some innovative approaches to introducing the literature we find to kids. One approach we use is in how we design our badges (which we call amulets) that kids can win on Pocket Tales. Here are some things we evaluate when designing a new amulet.

1) Give the Amulet a Backstory

Giving your amulet a backstory creates a way for users to connect with the amulet and your application on a much deeper level than just winning a generic graphic. The amulet we profiled in this post (“Toad Hall”) is the home of the main character Toad from the book Wind in the Willows. It is the final in a series of 4 amulets kids can win on Pocket Tales for reading books. Toad is notorious for owning material items, tiring of each and moving from one possession to the next. As the story progresses, he loses his most prized possession, Toad Hall, to intruders. It isn’t until his friends help him regain control of Toad Hall that he realizes his greatest possessions aren’t material things, but rather the camaraderie he shares with his friends. This is the last amulet to win in the series and correlates with the final possession Toad has when he comes to this realization.

Check out the rest of Yaw’s post here.