Chineasy - More!

After actually getting the book I was amazed, not only at the use of flat imagery but how well the imagery tries to incorporate Chinese text within the different imagery. Throughout the book doesn't have one main colour scheme, it uses a vast amount of different colours depending on the imagery and the text. However a lot of the colours are quite muted. 

Fig 1: Book - Chineasy (Front Cover) Fig 2: (pg 8)

Above is what the book of 'Chineasy' looks like as well as on page 8 of this book there is a little introduction to the author Shaolan. This woman was born in Taiwan who later moved to the UK and she made this book as she found it hard to teach her English brought up children the language and way of writing Chinese. She then decided to find a new and interesting way to make the language, which is how this book was made. She started this project on Kickstarter and gained a massive amount of money and support from people and was able to publish this book to everyone who was interested in the 'Chineasy' way of learning Chinese.

Fig 3 (pg 28) Fig 4 (pg 70)

Fig 5 (pg 114) Fig 6 (pg 64)

Above are a few examples of the way the imagery is laid out. I really admire the way it uses one term on the left, giving it a whole page to itself with the other phrases or words used with the term. The image on the left for most of the pages is really eye catching and draws you in straight away and that's why i love the book so much and it makes learning Chinese text more enjoyable and less of a chore or a hassle. This is coming from someone who is very interested in the Asian culture (China, Hong Kong, Japan etc). One day I'd love to visit these places and see the sites and food along with the style of living they have other there. 

I like how the illustrations relate to the word and are Incorporated together to made the form of the image more obvious and work well to establish what the image is and what the term means. I feel like this is going to help many people learn the language in an easier format, including myself. However the reason why I made another post about this book is because I want to give more of an insight to how the book is constructed and what the visuals alongside the text are like. 

This to me is a very inspiring book and more than anything i love how they use Chinese text against flat imagery with muted colours in order to help people learn the language. This book has inspired me and helped me with my visual research of flat imagery and muted colours, as i am planning on using flat design and its helped me to get inspiration from this and apply that inspiration into my own work, making sure my visuals are ascetically pleasing and would engage the user in my iBook through the unique visual style and the simplicity of the whole design and style.

Fig 7 (pg 182) Fig 8 (pg 152)

Above in Fig 7 this is an example of the page in the back like an index with all the terms laid out, this is a good way to simple admire the range of terms with just the term and imagery applied to give its meaning. In Fig 8 there are examples of more 'advanced' sentences to learn from some of these terms, which can help to improve someones speaking or learning of the language, with the use of small sentences.

Fig 9 (pg 160) Fig 10 (pg 170)

Something this book also does is creates a short story at the end and uses the text with imagery and style of the book to create a very uniquely styled story, using the imagery and text more for imagery. On the left I love how they use a very dark brown and contrast it with the bright colours of the characters within the circle. It makes the page simple but effective as its very eye catching. I love how in the example on the right there is more of a focus on the imagery to tell the story but the use of English text that tells the story is short and sweet. Helping the reader to focus more on admiring the beautiful illustrations.