The Tale of Mulan

This was a project I made in my Theory and Practice in Graphic Design class. In a previous assignment, we researched how visual communication occurs in a foreign culture. In my group, we researched visual communication in Chinese design. Our task was to create an effective game or book to introduce the foreign culture we researched to native English-speaking children in the United States. The objective was to experience the unique challenge designers face when designing for a specific audience group: Designing for children groups with less-developed reading skills and learning capacity. The goal was also to explore how to balance information and visual interests: The primary communication goal is learning how to draw their interests without overwhelming them. how to keep them entertaining.

I decided to write and illustrate a book designed for senior elementary school kids (4th to 6th grade). The foreign culture I would present to them was The Tale of Mulan. We’ve all seen Disney’s animated classic Mulan, but did you know her story goes back way further? The original story of Mulan, titled The Ballad of Mulan, is the oldest known version of Mulan’s story. Most likely composed during the era of Northern Wei (around 400 AD), this poem inspired countless retellings for centuries to come. This book takes kids on a journey through the original poem with several lines taken directly from the original, all within a digestible and easily understandable format, to give kids as accurate of a depiction of the original story of Mulan as possible.

All of the illustrations you see in the book, from the character design to the backgrounds, were all drawn by me and are my original creations.