GDES2014 – Children’s Book Design
WW1 Children’s Cookery Book Brief
This will be my final entry for this module as the deadline for submission is tomorrow. I have included pictures of my final artwork for submission.
The Cover
After trying a few different options, I ended up discarding this design as I felt tit was perhaps too sophisticated for the audience and that it wasn’t fun or engaging enough for your average 9-11 year old.
My final design features the famous ‘V’ for Vistory symbol, but with a twist. I used the carrots to suggest the cookery & home grown theme. I have used the sort of imagery that evokes a feeling of a bygone era. It demonstrates an aged look, patriotic undertones but also child like fun.
The typography originally looked too sterile and I noticed that a lot of children books feature playful type, so I did the same with the word “kitchen”. Private Pigeon also features on the front and rear covers, inviting the reader to don an apron and join him to cook. Overall I wanted to create a feeling of fun and interest. The colour palette is drawn from the union jack, but aged to look old, but with a modern twist.
The Spread
The first and perhaps most important thing I setup on the spread was the grid an column structure. As I have an interest in publication and layout, I spent a lot of time researching grids and layout techniques, which unltimately informed my design.
I used the left page as an introduction to the recipe, but also to add some background, educational information. I used WW1 related imagery and illustrations throughout, such as the Sopwith Camel bi-plane, with a fun cloud typography treatment. The grid came into it’s own on the right hand page, which shows a sequential recipe to follow. I used medals to show which step you are on and old style postcards for the information, as the soldiers would have sent home from the trenches.
The background elements feature an authentic WW1 map, distressed/grungey textures and poppy fields.
I incorporated user testing here too. The feedback was helpful and actually informed the design somewhat, mostly typographical changes to improve legibility and to support the way children learn at school, i.e. using uppercase first letter and then lower case as opposed to all uppercase titles. Overall I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out and the user feedback definitely helped refine it further
Activity Sheet
Continuing the ‘egg’ theme from the spread, I decided to create a drawing/colouring worksheet where the reader get’s to decorate their own egg, as the children of WW1 did. Private Pigeon offers some education information, whilst the decorative elements offer a little fun and inspiration to little minds.
Mock ups
I also created a few mock-ups to give a visual representation of how the finished articles may look. I also included the iPad mockup to show how an ePub or ebook may look.
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- Constructivist inspired book cover. Later discarded as perhaps too sophisticated for the age group?
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- Final Cover design
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- Final spread – Recipe – Eggless Sponge
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- Decorate your own egg activity sheet
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- Mock-up showing front cover and spine
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- Book mock-up showing the spread
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- Info sheet with mock-ups for submission on my mount board
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- iPad mock-up demonstrating how an epub version of the book may look
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- iPad mock-up demonstrating how an epub version of the book may look
7six creative 