Exercise: A Childrens Book Cover

A Children Book Cover

11/06/2018

' You are top produce a cover illustration for a natural history book for children (age 7-11) entitled Animals from Around the World. The image is to be used as a full colour front jacket to encourage children to choose this book from the library shelf. 

There is alo9ng history of covers for children's reference books and styles have changed over the years. Think about a modern audience and how you can attract children to the contents. 

Draw up at least three ideas as coloured client visuals. Include information on the final the size and format, and where the type will be positioned.

Note in your learning log the decisions you made through the design process.'  

  I started with two moodboards to see what was already out there with children's animals around the world:

Moodboard_01

Moodboard_01

  

  There are a lot of materials out there as you can see by the two moodboards I was able to make just by doing a random google search. Judging by these covers I feel that some of the designs are years old, I feel that kids a couple of years ago would pick something out like this compared to kids today they are more mature so I feel like I want to try a different look to the children's book.  

  Next I did some sketches of some random animals that came to mind:

Sketch Ideas

  After sketching the animals out I was just browsing the Internet at other wild animals and I came across line drawing of animals:

https://imjustcreative.com/one-line-animal-logos/2016/10/06

  I feel this style is elegant and could be what kids are looking for today, I think I will do a mock up of this style to see how it would turn out for a children's book maybe add some colour splodges. I keep having this Idea so before I can move onto another Idea I have to test this theory out before I decide if it works or not. 


14/06/2018

  As above I did a mock up of my idea that I wanted to test and I personally think it went well enough to include as one of my three final ideas. All my ideas are different to one another here they are below:

Ideas_01

  As above this is how my idea turned out from the inspiration from above. I feel it turned out well. 

  The final size of this idea will be 23cmx16xm, The colour will be black and white, the font used is blacker Display and is in the middle of the page. 

  I feel if I was to make changes on this idea I would make the font bigger to stand out more, I feel its a little taken over by the images of the animals, but I am overall pleased with how it turned out and I am glad I tested this idea first.  

Idea_02

  I noticed when doing my research and looking into other students work that a lot of students and people went with the literal sense of animals around the world. I decided to make a world out of dolphins the do a streak of green and blue water colour to represent the world. Then I randomly chose different animals and drew them inside it.

  The final size would be 25cmx18cm, the background would be white, and the font is blacker display and placed at the bottom of the page. 

  If I was to make some changes to this idea I would again make the font a little bigger so as to fill the gaps on either side of the book, and I am not sure if I would add a colour to the book for the background or keep it as it is. I am overall happy with the Idea. 

Idea_03

    

  So I took the idea from number one and decided to do a different variation of it. I have added colour to the background of this with watercolour paints. 

  The size would be 26cmx16cm, orange into yellow sunset background, the font is again blacker display. 

  If I was to make changes I would again make the font bigger to fill the top on the page and I would add a tree behind the gorilla to fill the big space between the font and the illustration. Overall I feel that this works as a book cover. 

  If I was to choose an idea for this book I think it would be between the first two ideas I feel that they could be developed more and look appealing to the generation today.