END OF MODULE EVALUATION

Emily of New Moon Pages Progress

What's working?

Lots of information and things to look at in the pages. An unusual approach to children's illustration.

Flowers add depth and layers - delicate and different textures/feeling

What's not working?

Quite dark old-fashioned looking? relevant but maybe boring?

the drawings are murky and badly drawn

badly printed images

MORE COLOUR

MORE DRAWING

PROJECT REPORT

Studio Brief 2 COLLABORATIVE

Autism Unmasked

Collage Materials

Collecting bits to use! An old photo album I bought from a carboot sale (all local scenes, but I've picked a few that look like they could pass as Canadian!)

Studio Brief 1 INDIVIDUAL MINI BRIEFS

Art Doll Quarterly: Country Fair

Art Doll Quarterly: I Am Woman

Hobbycraft: Share Your Heart

Studio Brief 1 INDIVIDUAL SUBSTANTIAL BRIEFS

Roald Dahl

Puppet Animation

The Book

It's time to make the book look like a book!

It's time to start putting together a design for a front cover...
I really like classic book covers, old and weathered, dog-eared copies of stories with yellowing pages. Probably not the best approach to pitching a new edition but I can't escape that old fashioned charm. 

All of the mock-up book templates I've seen have been super clean and digital. I especially hate the ones with fake backdrops or set-ups around them (glasses or a cup of coffee on the table). They just aren't right for my book (there aren't many mock-ups specifically for children's books - A GAP IN THE MARKET?) 

Can I make it look old and worn or does it need to look like a current product?
I think the purpose of this module actually is to propose applications for real-life commercial products so making it look that way isn't going to be right for this module. I need to re-think this and look at some modern book covers that I do like and see how I can do something similar. 

I feel so stupid trying to pick fonts and arrange things on a cover. I bet anyone trained in graphic design will look at it and laugh - I've probably chosen the most grannyish typography in the world! Need to get some feedback on this. I don't want it to look too twee!

Facsimile

The feedback I received in the mega crit last week made me realise that I had compromised my usual hands-on approach in favour of the speed of digital. I put together the scrapbook pages on Photoshop because I thought it would be the quickest way of assembling all of the parts BUT this flattened the pages and took away from the authentic magic of a real scrapbook. 

So this week I've been working backwards, making the ephemera and ageing paper with tea so that I will have more dimensional layers to work with. I will assemble them PHYSICALLY before scanning so that the shadows and weights of each item will be visible.

Mocking-up

Since this module is about APPLICATION, I thought it was about time for me to start APPLYING my work. Although my designs are not finished, I think it will be beneficial to start mocking them up to see how they COULD work on the products and see what I need to work on in order to make them APPLICATION READY.

I found some clean and professional hard cover book mock-ups on Graphic Burger and other online resources, but had to narrow down my selection to ones that suited my book. I want it to look like a classic children's gift book, so glossy printed covers or office backdrops aren't really relevant.

These are the two mock-ups I think I'll have a go with because they are pretty plain and I can apply my designs onto these smart objects, transforming them into the prospective book.