Elena Saharova’s clever designs are a refreshing alternative to newborn development flashcards

Crafted for her newborn son, the designer and art director Elena Saharova has launched See and Grow, a card game that helps build and develop visual perception skills for babies. The project arose after Elena became interested in how newborns observe the world, and how early cognitive and sensory development is supported through visual stimulation. “At an early stage, babies perceive the world as abstract shapes and contrasts rather than recognisable objects,” Elena explains. But, Elena wasn’t too enamoured with the typical flashcards you can buy for babies, and saw a a glaring issue. “Traditional flashcards often depict animals or common items, but infants don’t yet understand what a bear or a bird is,” she says. “I wanted to create a series that aligns with this natural progression.”

The cards are intentional, characterful and satisfying, with a colour palette of warm yet distinctive hues, neatly complementing Pangram Pangram’s Editorial New as the practical, primary typeface. “The colour choices follow the natural sequence in which infants develop colour perception,” Elena explains, detailing the extensive creative process that went into the palette, “with longer wavelength colours like red appearing first and shorter-wavelength colours like blue being recognised later.” The colours change across the pack, meaning they can continue to be used as the baby grows. 

The patterns involved as much extensive research. Elena wanted them to feel playful, but – more importantly – to serve a purpose. “I studied the key visual abilities that begin to emerge in the first six months of life and used them as the foundation for the design system,” Elena explains. “I wanted to understand not just what babies can see, but how their vision evolves, moment by moment.” In returning to the basic principles of visual perception and optical illusions – namely, how the eye is guided and focused by shape, rhythm, contrast, and spatial tension – Elena determined the four key areas of early visual development: experience of perceiving depth and size, recognition of shapes and patterns, enhancement of visual perception and contrast detection, and development of visual tracking and focus. “These four pillars of the series weren’t abstract themes, they emerged from that research as essential stages of how the visual brain begins to form,” Elena says. “They’re visual compositions, that speak to the senses long before language, meaning, or memory come into play.”

Reflecting on the project, Elena has received good feedback from her young client base. At only a few months old, Elena’s son was the first tiny human to test the card. “It’s been the most heartwarming part of the process,” she says, “I watched with amazement as he focused on the patterns, followed them with his eyes, and returned to them again and again.” Finding the entire process of designing her son’s earliest moments utterly surreal, Elena was compelled to share what she’s made with the world. “It felt like real communication, before words,” Elena ends. “That’s why I decided to share the cards with other parents, hoping they might become part of someone else’s playtime, connection, and discovery too.”

See & Grow is available online here.