Universal Voices eBook
About Universal Voices
Universal Voices is a free community choir for children aged 7-12 at the Institute of Education (IoE), run by Dr Rebecca Berkley and a volunteer student team and is funded by the UoR Communities fund. It is an inter-generational song sharing project, where the children in Universal Voices ask an elder member of their family to teach them a chant, singing game or song that they knew when they were children. Through this community, Rebecca aims to highlight the different cultural backgrounds of the students.
Cover design
To highlight the contributions of the children in collecting and recording the songs, I decided to do so through the covers of the eBook. This was done so by collecting their drawings during the visit to one of their rehearsals. All the drawings were then scanned and using both Canva and photoshop, I created a collage style cover including their hand drawings. The drawings selected for the cover reflected what Universal Voices meant to the children, with the addition of hand drawn lettering done by some of the children for the title added a personal touch to the eBook. The hand drawings and the vibrant colours helped highlight the innocence and enjoyment of the children and also reflect what the eBook was about.
Page layout demonstrating the song title and its related information with the music score sheet and lyrics
This eBook was designed for the Universal Voices choir based in Reading. The eBook was created with the intention of disseminating it to the local primary schools, to allow them to teach their students and also spread multicultural values to the students. Therefore, as a designer, my aim was to create an eBook that would allow users to both learn and engage in various cultures through the joy of music.
Check out the blog post for additional details.
Examples of some drawings done by the children
Inside pages
To make the eBook both educational and engaging for the readers, one of the ways i implemented it was through allowing the children to not only learn the songs but also the origin of the song itself. Therefore, it was suggested that on the pages, the country flag of the songs’ origin would be included as well.
As the design process unfolded, the layout was carefully structured to showcase lyrics on one side and music score sheets on the other, as well as seamlessly integrating interactive buttons for easy navigation. The buttons, when clicked, directed users to YouTube, where they can access audio and video links of the songs, enhancing the reading experience with visual elements.