Creating an Original Visual Language for a Children's Storytelling Project

I'm exploring the idea of creating an original visual language for a children's storytelling project.

Not simply individual illustrations...

A coherent family of simple symbols that can instantly communicate characters, ideas, emotions and recurring phrases.

The goal isn't realism.

It's fun.

Warmth.

Personality.

Recognition.

Almost a modern hieroglyphic language that children instinctively understand.

I'm curious whether anyone here has explored something similar or simply enjoys creating this kind of design system.

Sometimes the simplest ideas become the most memorable.

Done stuff kinda like this before, and the thing that made it click was picking one shape rule and never breaking it. Like every character is built from a circle base, or everything sits inside a rounded square. Kids latch onto the consistency way faster than they do any single cute drawing.

Emotions are the easy win, honestly. Eyebrows and mouth curve do 90% of the work, keep the eyes dumb and simple. You can get like 6-8 clear feelings out of tiny changes there.

The harder part is the "recurring phrases" idea. Symbols for concrete nouns are easy, symbols for stuff like "let's go" or "uh oh" tend to fall apart unless you tie them to a character doing something. Might be worth thinking of those as little poses rather than icons.

One thing I'd test early: show the symbols to actual kids with zero explanation and see what they guess. You'll be surprised what reads clearly and what totally doesn't. Adults overthink these, kids just tell you.

Start smaller than you think too, like 20-30 core symbols. Easier to keep a family feeling coherent when it's tight, and you can always grow it once the rules are locked.

The silhouette test is what I'd add to what @Adsmith2026 said. If you cant tell the characters apart as solid black shapes with no detail, kids wont either, especially on a book cover or tiny on a screen. Fixing that early saves a lot of pain.

Also think about how they combine, not just each symbol alone. You called it a language and thats the part people skip... a symbol for "boy" next to "run" next to "uh oh" should read left to right almost like a sentence. Once you have a little grammar for stringing them, the recurring phrases stop being one hard icon and become two or three easy ones in sequence.

One more, keep a tight color rule tied to identity. Give each main character one signature color and dont let it wander. Kids track color before they track shape half the time.

I like the idea A consistent set of simple recognizable symbols can become memorable over time especially if the visual style stays clear expressive and easy for children to understand.

Some really interesting observations here, thank you.

A couple of things have particularly resonated with me.

The idea of keeping a consistent visual "family" rather than designing isolated symbols makes complete sense. Likewise, thinking of recurring phrases as combinations rather than trying to force one icon to represent everything.

The silhouette point is also something I hadn't really considered. If a child can recognise a character from its outline alone, that's probably a very good test.

For now I'm deliberately keeping the idea simple.

I'm really exploring the emoji/icon side first.

The aim is to create a small family of original, expressive symbols that instantly feel like they belong together.

If that works well, everything else can naturally grow from there.

Sometimes the simplest ideas become the most memorable.