Creating Screen Based Materials for Children

Yesterday I attended a presentation by the Digital Media Consortia. The aim was to give the attendees an idea of how to go about creating material that would appeal to a child audience.

The main speaker of the event was Magnus Scheving, creator of LazyTown and probably better known as one of the main characters, Sportacus.
Magnus explained that it has taken him 12 years to get LazyTown to the level that it is at now. The programme has been sold to over 100 countries and is a huge success. The basic idea of the show is to encourage children to lead a healthy lifelstyle through entertaining them rather than by telling them. Magnus said that the show should be thought of as one person with each of the individual characters playing one particular aspect.
The main piece of advice that he gave was that to get a great idea we must constantly ask ourselves and others to "be more specific". By doing this it is possible to get all of the small details that are needed and that wouldn't be thought of initially.

The official LazyTown website can be found here.