Graphic Design Meets Education Sciences

The Innovative Approach of the "Books that Include Everyone" Project for Teaching Editorial Design

Abstract

"Books that Include Everyone!" is an innovative collaborative project between students from the Graphic Design and Early Childhood Education programs at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. Its main objective is to foster reading among individuals with different reading needs. This project aims for inclusion and accessibility by adapting original stories into simple and accessible language. Through an interdisciplinary approach, students have created a system of books that are not only visually appealing but also inclusive in their content and presentation.

Students from the Early Childhood Education program, through the Inclusive Education course, have worked on selecting and, in some cases, writing stories aimed at children aged 3 to 6. Based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, they have adapted these texts for easy reading, thus facilitating reading acquisition and comprehension for all children, including those with intellectual and neurodiverse disabilities. Graphic Design students, on the other hand, have developed an attractive and accessible graphic proposal, complementing the adapted content with interpretive illustrations and an editorial design aimed at promoting social inclusion and accessibility.

The project development followed a three-stage design method. The first stage involved a research process on the project context, analyzing existing content and typologies. In this phase, students from both disciplines collaborated in in-person and virtual meetings to define the contents, graphic concept, and book structure, including format and distribution characteristics. The second stage was divided into two parts: story adaptation by Early Childhood Education students and graphic composition by Graphic Design students. After jointly validating content and mockups, the detailed design phase ensued, where illustrations were digitized and the book was laid out and assembled into a functional prototype. Finally, in the testing stage, Early Childhood Education students tested the book with children in the specified age range, using a rubric to evaluate technical and theoretical interdisciplinary aspects.

This project has created an innovative and persuasive educational product and provided a valuable collaborative learning experience for the students involved. It demonstrates that the interdisciplinarity between Graphic Design and Education promotes meaningful learning and contributes to inclusion and accessibility in teaching reading.