2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Cultural / Context information for the jury

The average Arab child reads only 6 minutes a year. That is less than 4 words a day. WHSmith wanted to make reading more engaging for them. So we went into the world they love to engage with the most – mobile games. These games have pop-up ads that cannot be closed. So we hijacked that space with Pop-Up books that the kids could read to close the ad. This would give them rewards to use in the game like coins, boosts, extra lives and more. Making the habit of reading, a rewarding one. So we needed to make the experience as engaging as their world of games, which is why re-illustrating these stories was key to the idea being successful.

Tell the jury about the illustration.

We redesigned classic stories to fit within that world of games with high contrast vibrant colours that popped on screens. And modern, gamified versions of the characters. We used intriguing elements like the floating glass slipper in Cinderella or a flying fox in Little Prince, to draw the child in to find out why those elements were there. Each game was illustrated to match the style of the top 50 games that they appeared in. For eg. To work with games about hidden worlds we created stories like Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz. To work with games about planets – Little Prince. And forest-themed games - Jungle Book. The illustrations were made seamless, so the children could scroll through the story, reading at their own pace. We applied the same style to the questions at the end that the child could answer to close the ad.