Development Ideas

Some initial front cover design ideas and different steps of creation, involving the painted texture foods I made earlier. After receiving feedback off peers and clients, I need to look more into the sustainable side of the book such as emphasizing seasonal foods, colours etc. These designs however seem very suitable and appealing to children in my opinion due to the busyness, colours, textures and the game of 'follow the lines' on the front. Others feel the bowl could be illustrated as well as it could seem out of place, and that the lines should all be different colours or patterns. 

While I like this sleek simple design, I do not feel it is as appealing to children as my first design idea. Here I used my hand drawn food sketches accompanied by different fonts that mimic hand-written styles, giving that messy yet personal feel like a scrap book sort of deal. The minimal design emphasizes the sustainable theme as it leaves out unnecessary things, only giving us the important info. My tutor felt reminded of another book after looking at my design - 'The Sustainable Table' which I felt was a brilliant quirky designed book that worked well for its target audience, alas my book is aimed at children so again, I will be changing/going with a different design idea. 

Research into Children's Cookbooks

Brightly coloured, busy and fun. Hand render style fonts or cartoon-ish fonts will appeal to children.Eat seasonally graphic is inspirational to me but too much wording isn't suitable for children. Mixture of both photographs and illustrations.

The top ones seem very plain and boring, formal straight forward layouts. The 'Little Chef' book is better as its more illustrative and colourful in style. The 'Cooooookies' and 'Marmalade Flapjacks' art is very beautiful I think, the colours, textures and fonts use as well as it's busy-ness will appeal to 8 year olds. 

The Ellas kitchen book is very simplistic but still colourful and engaging, with messy hand render style fonts and child like illustrations. The 'First Cook Book' again has a nice illustartion style which I think works better than using photographs on a front cover. Little chef characters may be appealing and humorous for children.

Ring binders for childrens cooking books is a good idea I think, as they are more durable and can be laid down flat, whereas a normal bound one cannot. 'My Favourite Recipes' has a lovely intricate art style and 'The Kids Cook Book' had a just as nice, simplistic art style. 

'When we were very Young' BBC documentary series about childrens cook books

Initial Concepts and Roughs

I decided to create some painted textures and photograph different fabrics, as primary resource material I could use when putting my pages together or creating illustrations. I also roughly sketched some food items to then be coloured digitally. Sketchy lines reflect child-like tendencies to draw roughly and colour outside of the lines. I experimented with many different hand-render styles by using materials like crayons, charcoal, oil pastels, felt pens, oil paint, water colour paint, and fabric collage.

I then started to experiment with art styles. Here I cut out sections of my oil paintings in the shape of carrot, potato and an apple, inspired by the paint textures seen in 'The Hungry Caterpillar'.

Here I coloured in my food sketches in photoshop, painting outside the lines to give a messy sketchy appearance, similar to a childs drawing. 

I also experimented with photographic cut outs and adding personality to the food ie creating characters by adding faces, expressions, arms etc. 

I also looked at adding photographic and illustrative elements together. Here I combined my paint texture, photograph, typography and digitally created shapes and colours. 

Moreover, I began to look at page layout and sketched some quick thumbnails to show different possibilities of how the double page spreads could look.

Illustrators & Art Style Research

I started looking a bit more into children's books and illustrations / products aimed at children, in particular cookbooks and things to do with food. Firstly I looked through 'The 10 best children's cookbooks' put together by The Independent;
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-10-best-childrens-cookbooks-8588949.html

I noticed the varying art styles and noted what I though worked well and what didn't. I liked the books that used all illustration (such as 'Pretend Soup), as well as all photography (such as 'The Usborne Cookbook for Children) for their front covers. Some even use both illustrations and photography (Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes) which I think works well as the illustrations appeal to children and the photographs can make clearer instructions of what needs to be done for the recipe. The themed cookbooks also work well (The Moomins and Star Wars for example) as the children can relate to the characters they know and love.

I have also seen food being turned into characters in many children's books, going back to the idea of the face being important in what engages the child to relate to the character (as seen in the BBC TV programme 'Picture Book'). I own some stationary products from the shop 'Paperchase' which feature cute food characters with faces and thought this style might be appealing to children, particularly girls.

Some notable children's books and illustrators -

David McKee (Elmer)

Brightly coloured character and background, almost camouflaged, immediately creating a game for the child to find Elmer on the first page 

Mick Inkpen (Kipper)

Anthropomorphic dog as main character, bright colours, soft textures, a book series I enjoyed as a child. 

Lauren Child (Charlie and Lola)

Illustrations often involve mixed media and collage, incorporating different patterns and textures juxtaposed with sketchy hand drawn-styled characters.

Main Brief

Childrens Book Design Brief 2014

Clients: ‘Local Food Lunches’ and Partners (UW Sustainability, The Pumphouse Environment Centre, Malvern Hills Food Alliance and WildfoodUK.co.uk).

Title: The Family Sustainable Cookbook


Looking through the main brief, I selected some key words and phrases I felt important to remember when designing my cook book -


"Cooking with simple, healthy, seasonal ingredients of the like you'll find on your local highstreet (or region/countryside)

Children are loosing touch with where their food comes from.

For many busy families cheap supermarket food, fatty and sugar-ridden ready meals and convenience foods often form the majority of the weekly diet.

Cook simple,quick,healthy and cost-effective alternatives.

Food often cheaper found on the local highstreets, rather than supermarkets. 

Shopping locally can be 'win-win': purchasing local products can help make for a more sustainable lifestyle, benefit your local economy by bringing in money and helping rejuvenate your highstreet - and by association, your local communities.

This book will aim to re-engage children and families with good, healthy, seasonal foods by getting children to cook (with adult supervision) simple recipes via visually dynamic spreads with specific focuses (via our partners)

There is one main age group category aimed at (assume with adult supervision) - 8yrs upwards.

Produce - 1 front cover (front, spine and back) + 2 internal double page spreads."

Added Features

Notes from lecture.

How children learn? Are they a visual, kinetic or auditory learner?

Young children - 5 senses - taste, touch, sight, sound and smell.
Engage in more than 1 of these, more likely to pick up book and learn.
Books vs technology (tablets, phones) - how to make a book stand out - added features

3 Approaches to aiding/improving child's learning - Building on existing knowledge (juxtapose 1 reference they understand to one the don't) Transferring knowledge (Applying learned knowledge to real life situations) and Memory Strategies (repetition + rhyme).

Book Design Added Features Examples:
Buttons, Wheels, Move-able parts, Animations, Puppet Toys, Textures (different fabrics, paint brush textures), Rhythm (avatar/character featured on every page or chronological story), Stickers, Crayons, Wipe Clean boards/Blackboards, Added electronics Lights + Sounds, Specialized inks, Scratch Sniff Smell, Die Cuts, Flaps, Fold outs, Pop-ups.

Too many added features can over-complicate things.

Session task - quick analysis of 2 books with added features -

Calm Down, Boris
Added content is a plush puppet that is stuck through the middle of the book, so it is featured on every page. It is brightly coloured and furry so encourages the children to stroke and engage in play with the character. The story features the character going to different places, and the puppet can be used by both parent and child. The words encourage interaction with the puppet - ‘let’s stroke his fur to make him feel better.’ 
Touch is the main sense used for this book due to the fluffy texture of the puppet. We think this is an appropriate way to present the content as the content always refer to the texture ‘brush his hair’ ‘tickly kisses’. Other senses include sight as the pages are quite stylized and detailed with others objects and characters to find. The main plush puppet is only the mouth part of the character, his eyes, arms and legs are illustrated so he has different expressions and body language on each page. The book can be considered a toy as well as book so children can enjoy it over and over. 

Fantastic Four Pop-Up
Unique shape of book, shiny printed sections of front cover and pages. Follows format of a comic book but with pop-ups. Every page has a pop-up, pull-out or flap which would entertain the children for longer and they can play around with the book more. Senses that have been stimulated are touch and sight. The shiny sections, flaps and pop ups can be touched and the pop-ups are engaging to look at also. The pages are quite detailed with lots of image and text which is also visually engaging. We think the pop-ups are appealing to a younger audience and are presented well, but it is very text heavy and the text is quite small so this might not be suitable for the younger children. We also think that the pop-ups are delicate so again might not be suitable for a younger child unless it is read with an adult. 



Cookbooks with added features - examples

First one features pages where children can draw on and write their own recipes, second one comes with a free apron that the child can wear whilst cooking and using the book.

My own experimentation and thoughts with added features (from sketchbook)-

Week 5 Blog Task

'Easy Cheesy Eggy Bread'

I chose to make the 'easy cheesy eggy bread' as it was a simple start and the recipe I would have most enjoyed, plus I feel it would be the most appealing to children due to its simplicity. I made the dish in Ludlow, where I also purchased the ingredients. 

Bread - £1.40 for a loaf from Waltons Bakery.

Cheese - £1 for the block I purchased, also from Waltons bakery, locally supplied.

Butter - £1 from a supermarket.

Chives - £1 from a local green grocer.

Egg - £1 for a box, from Clun farm.

Overall I think it would cost less than £1 per person for this dish as the small amount I used actually made enough for 2 people. It only took about 10 minutes to make this dish, and I think after making it once it would take even less time to complete if I were to do it again. To change or improve the recipe, I could try using different varieties of breads such as wholemeal or flavoured varieties. I could add toppings such as bacon bits or onions and peppers, which may be more appealing to children due to different colours and textures.