Wednesday, 14 March 2012

Models

Ceramic models

I stumbled across this website in my early research where I was astounded into how much detail someone will go through to create imagery for a children's book. This artist Liz Lomax has created models to replace drawings for children’s books. This approach to designing imagery for books is something that I had never seen before and I found that it took her around 4-8 hours per model to create.

This is a techniques which aren’t used often or at all because of the amount of time and materials it takes. I don’t think I will be using something like this because of the time I have and the costs of the materials that I will have to use. I will also not be using this because of the popularity of this; it hasn’t been popular as a book because children would rather touch something like this instead of reading 
about it. But here are the images below.


 

Good Examples Of Photography

How Wild Things Move

I have now been looking for some inspiration into what I need to be looking at as a design for my pages of the book. There are many to look at out there and I will be looking at as many as I can.
This is a book called "How wild things move", and I found this to be one of the more inspirational books that I have found for kids.
This book uses photography as a main part to all of its pages, this is then filled with a good amount of text which doesn’t overload the reader and hurt the eyes. I like this as it’s done in such a way where the text isn’t to heavy on the page and the colours used for the writing is done well as you can see the image in the background on the top tips section.

I do think that using a top tips section to a page gives the child a little piece of information which they might not have known. If I were to use this is one of my final designs I think it would work mainly because of the amount of information that kids these days do not know. 

The images below show what this piece is all about. Using one big image as a background with little pieces of information around is something that I might use when designing my finals designs.

 http://celestevlok.com/1105310/Children-s-Book-Design-How-Wild-Things-Move


 








































 
 

Monday, 12 March 2012

Selling Books

Front Cover Designs

This piece of research I found to be very useful in the fact that I didn’t realise that it was so important. The front cover of any book let alone children's book is the single hardest thing to design as it has to hit the target audience straight away.

If it doesn’t then it will never succeed in selling and attracting customers. What you decide to put on a front cover to sell the book is based on what the book will be about as well as the message you are trying to get across. Maybe it will be a book for a horror and a colour flower daisy story. 

But either way it still has to be targeted at the right audience, otherwise they will not enjoy the front cover and never get the book. Children's book is especially hard as you are never sure to target the cover at the kids who will be reading the book or the adults who will be buying the book. It’s a dilemma which only hard research can uncover.

Content is another huge factor to contend with when designing a front cover, this is stated in this article. You could create a fantastic image but having the much text could ruin everything and vice versa. One of the most inspiring words that I know from my research is "Moderation". Having a page packed of information can hurt the eye and make you not want to read any more.

These tips on this website will help anyone have an idea on what to put on a front cover of a book. Finding this was very helpful as I never new something like this could mean that you book may ever make it past the book shelf.

Below are the first few paragraphs that are given to explain the situation with designing a front cover. 


" 15 Tips for Great Book Cover Design


After their book is written and editors sign off on the final rewrite, authors often turn their attention to what will become one of their most agonizing tasks in the entire process – deciding on a book cover design.
One reason the task becomes so daunting and painful is that authors too often wait until the end of the process, instead of nearer the beginning, to think through book cover design.
As a book publicist and book marketer I cannot caution authors enough – do not underestimate the importance of a book cover’s design.  Not only do potential book buyers judge a book by its cover but so do members of the media.

I have personally seen a major book reviewer for a large magazine hold a client’s book, run her fingers over the cover and say, “I’ve not heard of this author or publisher, but this book looks very nicely done, tell me more about.” Conversely, I’ve heard a reviewer quickly respond “We don’t review self-published books,” because the cover screamed cheap!
While we often hear “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” everybody – book buyers, reviewers, media and consumers alike – most certainly do judge a book by its cover. "

EBooks

Children's EBooks 
I have been looking into other ways that books can be presented other than just on paper. There are a few ways in which you are able to do this. One of the more used and most popular way to read other than paper is digital. In other words EBooks. These are digital copies of any book that can be shared, copied or send from anywhere to anywhere with internet access or a memory devise. 
This have been a huge thing recently as more and more media devices are coming out with the capability of transferring a book from paper to a digital format. Using suck devise as phone tablets or even just a computer you are able to read on a screen. As this is a new sort of technology there are some articles that are against this as it’s ruining the publishers and author’s lives. But in my opinion I don’t think this is something that needs to be banned but published. Having books which are easily accessible is the way forward as this will mean that people wanting to buy books can get them quickly.
 The two websites that I have given here are about what eBooks are and how to use them and one website I found you can get 40 free EBooks for free.

 
 

Essential Tips For Creating A Children’s Book

Five Essential Tips for Creating a Children’s Book

This has to be one of my more imaginative research pieces I have found to date. This is explaining what you have to do to get a well-designed children's book from writing and designing to the finish published products. Using the five key elements you are able to have a small team to create a children's book. 

There is a problem with this I find is that you have to have a very skilled person  at each stage on this process otherwise how will you be able to accomplish a successful children's book. This piece of research is helpful if I would be looking into actually creating a book but as I am not and only looking into creating 2-6 pages in my designs I will be looking at all the points but in very different ways. Mainly is a smaller fashion. As I already have my brief and I need to create a children’s book for an age range with foraging in mind. This has taken care on the first point. 

Looking into the message to be put across will come from other research and the age range I decide to choose in the end. So that takes care of point 2. The third point will be harder for me as I need to somehow cut down my sentences to form more condensed version of the information but still appealing to small children. 

These five points have given me something to work against so I cannot go off track chasing down opportunities which will just waste my time. This is why I think this piece of research isn’t as useful as it could be but still one of my more valuable pieces.

 

The five points are below. 

1. Don’t take writing skills for granted.

2. Develop a meaningful message.

3. Can you sum up the message in a short sentence?

4. Work with professionals on illustrations.

5. Work with a professional children’s book designer.

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2011/09/27/childrens-book-tips/

 

 

 

 

 


MAA Designs

Fantasy Illustrations

I have decided to look at Maa Designs as when I saw some of these I found them to be amazing to look at. The ones that I have chosen to show on here are some of my favourites that they have done throughout there work but I have found some other pictures which I did find useful. 

The detail that they have used is something I would like to use in my finals designs but not sure I will be able to depending on the age group that I will be looking at. Colour schemes seem to be something which is used all the time to make a statement about the book that you are reading. Dark and dull colours are not used very much in younger children's books as it doesn’t attract the child's attentions. But in older aged children they like the dark and dull colours as it means something is wrong or and action mystery type of book. This is mainly because they are getting older and they have grown out of the childish story’s there parents read to them.

Here are the examples of Maa Designs work that I liked.

"

Children's Books For Designers

Why Are Children’s Books Good for Designers?

This is a question I had to ask myself as this type of media is something I am not familiar with. This page is explaining to me that it can be done by graphic designers and not just illustrators. 

The first two paragraphs explain what needs to be done at the moment as it basically says that children's books these days are getting steadily worse because of the immediate problem of getting them to sell more than what they are intending to do. The first two paragraphs are shown below. 
There are also some link to other illustators on here and designers that i have looked at as there work is something that i would like to achieve.


 "
Children’s books are a great gift to the world, and are often credited with developing children’s minds and talents. Despite their moniker, however, simple stories can be inspirational for adults as well, and designers and illustrators in particular. The simplicity and fresh perspectives that quality children’s literature gives can seldom be found elsewhere.

screenshot
Illustration by Ernest Shepard
I think we can all agree that, in the past few decades, the quality of children’s books has dropped significantly. Nearly all of the children’s books on the shelves are composed of garish colors, mediocre illustrations and impossibly painful rhyme. The immediate impression is of an adult trying desperately to make a book that will entertain a child for more than 10 minutes but doesn’t quite know how to do so. There seems to have been a disconnect between the adult and child minds. We need to reestablish that connection. "

http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/why-are-childrens-books-good-for-designers/