Sekretne życie pszczół

DESIGN: Agnieszka Kamińska

Poland

make me! 2013

“The Secret Life of Bees” is an educational game for blind and partially-sighted children. It is made up of a carton beehive and 14 boards put inside as if they were honeycombs. There are also additional boards, e.g. a beekeeping frame that needs to be filled with honeycombs of different textures, or a memory game. The boards were all made of a PVC foamboard, which is resistible to mechanical damage even when frequently used by a blind child. All the elements were designed to provide the children with as many tactile experiences as possible and to help them imagine the world around them. The materials and fabrics used for the manufacture of the pictograms have all different textures, e.g. fleece, felt or sandpaper. The softest to the touch, however, are a teddy bear and a bee. The black and yellow used in the design are the most contrastive colours, highly recommended for partially-sighted children. There is not a lot of educational material for blind children in the market. “The Secret Life of Bees” comes as an answer to the lack of both instructive and aesthetically attractive teaching aids for this group. The whole set was prepared in the most economical way for high-volume manufacturing.