What is the Shape of my Room?

Graphic Designer: Tran Ngoc Duong
Illustrator: Tran Ngoc Mai
Illustrator & Graphic Designer: Duong Minh Duc
Paper Artist: Nguyen Sy Nam Anh
Location: Vietnam
Project Type: Student Project
School: University of Greenwich Hanoi
Tutor: Nguyen Hong Truong
Packaging Contents: Pop-up Book
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Paper
Printing Process: Offset

“What is the Shape of My Room?” is a sensory, highly interactive pop-up book, with the main purpose of providing educational activities for young children from the age of 0-6, which in our case, is an introduction to geometry.

Considering the very young ages of our target audiences, the book’s content was narrowed down into 3 basic fundamental shapes: Square (Rectangle), Triangle, and Circle. In order to present the knowledge of geometry in an effective, yet captivating way to such a young age, we came up with the idea of illustrating these shapes into familiar household objects, for example, a square closet, a circle clock, … and then grouped them into 3 specific concept rooms. Moreover, after interacting with the book, kids can identify geometric shapes from their surroundings and understand the uses of each shape.

For each room’s concepts, we designed 3 different characters, color themes, and personality traits that entail well-known characteristics of these basic shapes. To be specific, Squares or Rectangles are known for their stability, neat, and strong visual appearance. Triangles bring edgy, active, dangerous feelings due to their harsh sides and pointed ends. On the other hand, Circles are universally appeared to be safe, friendly, and hearty.

“What is the Shape of my Room?” pop-up elements are meticulously crafted to not only offer a captivating sight and touch, but also are designed for users to interact, play, and explore with every object as an actual toy house. Thanks to this aspect, children are able to gain theoretical knowledge application, as well as further develop their curiosity and senses.

The unique features of our product are the 3-dimensional space, together with pop-up graphic elements that help to create realistic visibility for the designed objects, allow children to observe various angles, perspectives, therefore, gain understanding about information of geometric shapes.

This is a passionate project, with its purpose is to create a fun and effective education method for children. Furthermore, this book is a bridge between parents and their children to have engaging play time while introducing wonderful knowledge.