Idea Development

After thinking more about the sustainability side of the brief, I started to come up with some page design ideas. The pages would feature information on where the ingredients come from, but the visuals would dictate what season the food grows in (within UK). For example a recipe that used (UK grown) strawberries would have a summer theme and a recipe using broad beans would have an Autumn theme. This can also be applied to things like holidays, like Christmas themed recipes would have a matching theme.
I also started looking into brown paper texture for my backgrounds, as it gives a green/sustainable vibe as well as the personal scrap-book idea I looked at earlier. Varied Hand-render style text also adds to this.

Sustainable cook-book Research

Simple in Season - 4 strips reflect 4 seasons and what foods to eat in those seasons. The Southern Foodways Alliance - Beautiful earthy colours, simple illustrations and paper textures.

Baby and Child Vegetarian Recipes - Lots of fruit and veg is colourful and appealing, reflects theme and healthiness. The Sustainable Table - brown paper texture reflects sustainable theme, natural, no toxic inks. Simplistic illustration looks modern and suitable for the theme. 

London Book Fair Trip 2014

Three Different Innovations:

Digitized story telling coming in many different forms, whether it be apps on a smartphone or tablet, games on a computer or e-books on something like a kindle. I saw a lot of these ideas at The London Book Fair which is appropriate as more and more children are getting used to using such technology. It often enhances the childs experience with things like interaction (touch, tap, swipe, flick) sound, games, animation and videos.

Books as different shapes, not squares or rectangles. I particularly liked these ideas as it would definitely appeal to children having something they're not used to (normally see rectangular books and screens) The shape often reflects the content for example the cookbooks are food. The Sandwich designs are also made from a foam material which again enhances the childs experience with a new texture to touch.

Books as toys. There are many different ideas to do with this, such as the 'Teachers Pets' which is something I even had when I was a child. It is a small plush with a zip mouth, but when you unzip it the book is inside. The cupcake product is actually a box with the book inside, as well as other added features like free cupcake cases, wooden spoon, apron etc. 'Who Lives Deep in the Forest' had buttons included in which, like the e-books and games, the child can press and they will make sound effects. Of course there were lots of intricate pop-up designs that I really enjoyed also. Book covers were also made out of different materials such as the one featuring a chicken is like a soft pillow, definitely suitable for very young children who like to throw things about!

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.