Since 2013, “Playful Development” has been the Ravensburger Group’s mission. Nevertheless, up until now, the subject has been broached rather conservatively in corporate communication. The corporate presentation says: “The Ravensburger Group provides meaningful products for the playful development of people.” And continues: “Playful development is our mission that provides the framework for our actions.”
To emphasise the importance of the mission, the annual report should make a detailed assessment - in the form of an exploration of the mission and its meaning for the Ravensburger Group, the Group’s brands, for the products and for the people in the company and outside it.
A basis for the mission has became more urgent over the past few years as the Ravensburger Group has continually grown and has become more international and more digital. In 2018 the Group began a new organisational structure. Good reasons therefore for a clear, unmistakeable positioning of the brand.
There are many opportunities to broach the subject of “Playful Development”. We chose a double strategy: An essay should explore the meaning and implications of the mission and place it in the history of the company. It was necessary to prove the theory that a line pervades from the beginnings of the publishing house until today: the two-pronged approach combining play and seriousness, entertainment and education, ultimately found a consistent connection with “Playful Development”. This was considered a contemporary reformulation of Ravensburger’s basic concept.
UNUSUAL VISUAL PRESENTATION
How can you make “Playful Development” visible? We purposefully don’t focus on the most obvious application, i.e. on photos of peopleplaying, reading, painting, exploring, etc.
Instead, we have used scientific methods to research what happens when people play, read, do puzzles, solve tasks, etc. In collaboration with experts. Ravensburger Group games and books were tested at the Centre for Empirical Communication Research (ZEK) from the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Ravensburg. They measured levels of tension, attention, concentration, joy and shared experience - via eye movements, facialexpressions, pulse and skin conductance or picture scales. Depending on the methods used the results are available in graphs, diagrams, thermal images or coded facial expressions.
The decisive creative step: The scientific graphics were playfully developed into collages from test results, illustrative and typographical elements and photographed parts from the respective products. So each of the eight pictures invites you again to playfully unscramble them. A detailed caption serves as scientific proof and an interpretation of the measurement results. It names product, test methods and names and ages of the test subject.
A glossary provides more detailed information about the test methods used and presents pack shots of the products.
