Branding, Identity, Audience, Typography, Storyline

March 30, 2016April 10, 2016 Francesca Hannah Veal Development, Project Four, Research Audience, Branding, Colour, Identity, Project Four, Research, Storyline, typography

I want to use the skills I have learn from my other projects to help make this project the best I could.

Branding and Identity

In the creation of my picture book It is important that I consider how I make each design (colour, shape, technique) but I also need to think why I am making it that way and what influence it will have on my reader.

The choice of colour I use can connote a lot about my book – the mood of the characters, the moral of the story, feelings and emotions. Because I want my book to be happy and light feeling, not very dark or sinister, I want to stick to a certain set of colours which will create the mood I have envisioned. I therefore created a colour palette with swatches of the colours I will be using mostly.

By using these colours they will be branding my book, with the aim being that people will begin to connote these colours with the book. Also, by sticking to these it will neaten the book up and look more professional.

Considering Audience

I need to make sure my book is correctly targeting my chosen audience.

My specific audience is both male and female, aged 3-7. I have chosen aged 3-7 because aged 3-5 the Adults can read to their children, and aged 5-7 they can read the book themselves as the language is not too difficult.

I have researched into books targeted at that age range. The majority of them have cartoon animals as main characters which is lucky for me as I have already decided on bees. It is hard however to properly look at these books online as it only shows the front covers and not the inside of the books. However from what i have seen and noticed is that the designs are very simple – not over complicated – which I would guess it makes it easier for the children to understand and follow the storyline of the book.

Typography

When I think of children’s books four main books come to mind: Winnie The Pooh, The Tiger who came to tea, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Tabby McCat.

The aspect all these classic children’s books have in common is their use of a serif thin font. If I had more time for this project I would have loved to have created my own font for the book as it would be more of my own work, however as I have said I don’t have enough time. When playing around with my front cover and the title I have taken a strong liking to the font Lucida Bright Demibold.

"Lucida Bright Demibold" used on my title — “Lucida Bright Demibold” used on my title

I think this font is easy to read and has a classic “hard-book” look to it, like the ones above.

Storyline

Although I have already written my story and storyline I found a useful website called “Writing Children’s Books for Dummies” and it gave useful tips about creating your storyline.

This has given me almost “feedback” to look at my own storyline and see if it is suitable and will target/attract/appeal to my audience.

Front Cover Development

March 28, 2016 Francesca Hannah Veal Development, Experiments, Project Four development, Experiment, Front Cover, Project Four

I have began working on my front cover, following my plan ideas in my storyboard.

I began with my central image of my main character. I have chosen this bee sketch that i scanned in.

I removed the white from the background, duplicated the layer and flipped the layer horizontally to make the left side of the body.

The outline needed a thin layer over the top to make it stand out more, and then I began colouring in the body on a layer underneath the outline – as shown in my workshop.

I then placed in my title (temporary font and colour until I have decided on my type) and a shadow underneath the bee. I like the simplicity of my front cover at the moment and I think the plain white background is working better than a block colour, however I may add a faded background like I did for my first page but a green colour for the floor rather than blue for the sky.

Page One Development

March 24, 2016 Francesca Hannah Veal Development, Experiments, Project Four development, Experiments, Images, Line Painting, Photoshop, Project Four

I have been using what I was taught in my design workshop on line painting to colour in my objects for my first page.

blog update2

I am really pleased so far how well my images are turning out, despite taking a long time with all the layering of paint and small brush strokes I am doing. I am hoping my main characters which I will be designing next will go just as well.

I need to start thinking also about the type of font I want for my pages. At the moment I am torn between keeping the book looking quite traditional and using a serif font with straight lines such as Times New Roman, or a more handwritten font (perhaps designing one myself) to keep the book looking child-like and also matching my messy/painted look images.

First stage of editing

March 24, 2016 Francesca Hannah Veal Development, Experiments, Project Four Brush tools, development, Drawings, editing, Photoshop, Project Four

I have begun editing my scanned in drawings – removing any white from the background and experimenting with different brush tools to add colour to my images.

I have added in the text of the story, however I want to look into more details about which type of font and size I want to use so for now I am just using what it is set as.

I like how the images are starting to look, and the fact you can see the brush strokes makes the image look more ‘authentic’ and ‘cute’ looking – similar to the Winnie the Pooh books!

I want to keep experimenting with different brush types and also maybe add in a faded background, maybe with a 30% opacity?

Storyboard

March 24, 2016 Francesca Hannah Veal Development, Project Four development, planning, Project Four, Storyboard

I have created a rough storyboard on Photoshop to give me a rough idea of the layout of my book, page sizes, organisation and storyline.

Here is a PDF version: Storyboard

I can now begin editing my images and creating each page.