Children's Books

I have been focussing my practice more and more towards illustrating children's books. This years competition briefs are providing me with insight into the industry. So far I have been working on a book cover for 'The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4'. The process has helped me to learn how to work with constraints set by 'clients'. When I first started roughing out what I wanted to do with the cover I didn't realise how much text I would need to incorporate into the design. The amount of text on the front and back cover meant that it would have to be more than a consideration, it would need to be one of the main elements of the composition. I have made two book covers before but only for myself where I had full control and had very limited constraints in terms of what I needed to include. As well as researching and roughing at the start of a project I need to get used to considering product specific criteria such as who the target audience is and whether the content is appropriate. I wasted a lot of time in this project working towards ideas that were never going to work, it wasn't a problem as I have plenty of time to finish the brief but if I was on a limited time scale working for a client I would have wasted valuable time I could have used more productively. I think it is important to streamline my practice so that I can not only fully understand the brief, the product and the target audience but also be able to do all this quickly and efficiently.

I have been reading interviews with the judges for the Penguin Books student award brief. This has helped me to understand what it is that publishers are looking for in a book cover. I think it is tempting to try and tell too much of a story through the cover. During this brief I found that I was wanting to keep the illustration very simple but don't feel confident enough to do it. As this cover is for a children's book I wanted to make it a fun designs with bold colours that draw the eye and make you want to pick it up. The book as been published a number of times and has fans of all ages so the cover would also need to appeal to adults that have fond memories of reading it as a teenager, I decided to include a number of the characters from the book that hopefully capture the imagination of the people are already fans and want to read the book again. I think in a lot of occasions it is important to appeal to both children and adults when illustrating children's books, both through illustration and the content of the book itself. The parents are your customers at least as much as the children if not more. There has been a trend in books and films in the last few years that appeal to both children and adults. Neil Gaimans work is mad up of simple shapes and bold colours making up interesting compositions and funny/cute characters that I think children love but the compositions and colours are refined way beyond most children's books and appeal to adults as well.

The next two competition briefs I have chosen are both based on children's books, one based on Roald Dahl's work and the other is illustrating a book for a new author. All three briefs are based on children's books but concentrate on different elements that I want to learn more about. The first brief is concentrated on book covers the second is character development and composition and then the third is to illustrate the whole book. I have chosen this order so that I can learn along the way. I want to be as informed as possible by the time I start the final brief which I believe will be the biggest and most complete challenge. I need to do more research on the industry to find out how illustrators work with their clients and target audiences.