Children's Book: Initial Ideas

The initial ideas for the design of the book looked at ways of presenting relevant textures and colours that were reminiscent of the natural world. This would aid the sensory reception of the reader, as well as providing a depth to the visual language. The design spoke with the Illustrator about relevant methods of production, such as traditional printing methods to achieve these textures. 

A mood board was put together of the relevant imagery gathered through research that represented the cultural and historical contexts of the narrative, as well as the relevant tone of voice. Colours were then grabbed from this imagery, which would be used for design throughout. This way of limiting the colour palette sets relevant boundaries so that the design did not get too complicated for the target audience. 

Initially, ideas around the imagery were more catered to the designer/author, however after a push, the development wanted there to be equal contribution in deciding the creative methods used for producing the imagery (and thus overall visual language). As such, the designer and illustrator separated off to get their own initial ideas out so that the development could poole inspiration from both visualisations.

Cover Type

The initial cover type experiments were developed off the back of trends in current children's cinematic productions. The typeface Cabernet JF has been shown to fit well with both digital and drawn imagery, as well as aiding a fantastical tone. This thus provided the right amount of malleability with what the illustrator might produce.  

Initial typographic treatments for the cover:

The cover design played with shapes connoting a phoenix, as well as ideas of the sun and moon, using the relevant colours and textures from the mood boards. The initial designs heavily focus on presenting the relevance of the night within the narrative, to attract a broad audience. The aesthetic definitely mirrors more fantasy productions, like Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings, which on reflection may be too heavy for the intended audience. 

Examples of initial application of colour and pattern from the mood board for the balloon ship:

Conclusions & Further Research:

After the collaborators reconvened the direction had taken a different visual route, with both the designer influencing the character design progression, and the illustrator influencing the typographic treatments. 

It was decided the design would be fully digital, making it easier for the collaboration to move imagery and text when necessary. It was also decided to use one shape for the development of all the imagery, again setting boundaries to achieve efficient outcomes. 

Henceforth, due to the nature of the placing the type in conjunction with the imagery, the design had to wait for the illustrator to get the basic layout down before the text could be developed onto the spreads. 

Dimension Decisions:

After looking in the library at the existing children's books, the design chose a relevant dimension to work from. The choice to have the book 20 x 25 cm ensured enough room for big bold type, with a happy amount of negative space from the imagery. The design also liked the idea of having the dimensions close to square, in creating this balance and accounting for the relevant shape that was to be used for the imagery. 

• 20 x 25 cm pages
• 200 x 500 mm spreads
• 10 mm bleed for production cropping

Typeface

The design then read the paper by Sue Walker on the use of Typography in Children's books, and concluded on Futura due to its specific characteristics of being:

• clear
• bold
• friendly 
• popular 
• neutral 

Extract:

Typography in Children's Books 
Article Author: 
Sue Walker 154 
Sue Walker explores the influence of typefaces.

Are children influenced in their choice of book by the typeface? Do children need special typefaces? Are some typefaces better in helping children learn to read? Sue Walker explores. 

One of my favourite books for children is I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child. The story is compelling, and the pictures enchanting, but the typography is not what you would expect: the letters vary in size and shape, some lines are straight, and others meander across the page. Young children love this: those who cannot yet read pick out the letters; those who can love the variation and delight at being able to cope with it. It suggests that children have a very broad tolerance when it comes to letterforms for reading. But are some typefaces better in helping children learn to read? Do children need special typefaces? If publishers want to use a special typeface, is it a good idea and what options are there?

The Typographic Design for Children project at The University of Reading has studied the extent to which typography influences children's choice of book. It has looked, in particular, at what children thought about particular typefaces and how they described them, and whether they noticed and could describe variations in letter, word and line spacing. Part of the work considered whether typefaces that had been designed with the perceived needs of children in mind were in fact helpful.

Conclusions

• Our tests, using the Sheepless Night books, indicated that children can be very tolerant of a range of typographic variants. 
• In practice, some of the extreme versions with very close or very wide letter, word and line spacing would never be used. 
• Children's ability to cope with such extremes, albeit in a test situation, suggests that focusing on very particular issues, such as whether serif or sans serif type is 'best' or whether 'a's and 'g's should be single or double-storey, may not be as relevant as once thought.
• Children's views, based on their perceptions of levels of difficulty, and their thoughts about particular typefaces and their use were useful in trying to establish what typographic features are helpful in reading books. 
• Motivation to read can be affected by typefaces children think are inappropriate for a reading book, or too distinctive. 
• Children in our sample used the word 'normal' to describe Century, Gill and Fabula suggesting they thought these typefaces were suitable.
• Many children spoke of 'reading a's' and 'writing 'a's' suggesting they were well aware of the difference in shape between single and double storey forms. 
• Though some children perceived a and g as 'harder' than x and x, it did not affect their motivation to read. Letter, word or line spacing that was very narrow was thought by many children in our sample to make text seem more difficult. 
• Most important, the children in our sample presented wide-ranging and articulate views which suggest that it is unlikely that one style/kind of typography will suit every child. 
• Discussion of typographic attributes - the typeface and the space between the letters, words and lines - should, however, be a significant element in helping children choose a book.

Note: I Will Never Eat A Tomato - Lauren Child - Typographic treatments