Evaluation

Evaluation

I began this project with the idea of creating a fun, contemporary book about artists from throughout history, for the ages of 9 and up. I wanted to create this product because when I was younger I had no books based on art that interested me at a young age and the only things that I learnt about art were from art lessons at school. I decided to stick with the average children’s book size of 32 pages so that it would fit in alongside other books on the market.

I decided that so this book would sell, I would have to make it appeal to the adult market as well as they would be the ones buying it for their child.  For this reason I decided to go with a contemporary style that would draw a modern parent to it as well as a younger child. The colours played a large part in making the book appeal to both audiences, I chose a colour bright enough that a child would want to pick up but muted enough that it fits in with the latest colour trends, the colour that I decided to go with in the end was a slightly pastel version of bright yellow. I feel as though this worked well as it fit in with the black line drawings used throughout the book.

I wanted to stick with slightly simplistic drawing style that would appeal to a younger audience, I didn’t want to have the drawings too simplistic though because I feel as though that would bring the target audience age down to a much younger age. For the profile drawings I decided to keep them fully coloured so the reader could get a true sense of what the artist looked like. I kept the rest of the drawings in black and white because I was inspired with the old horrible history books as they had a similar style of book to mine and they worked really well.

       

For the typography I wanted to keep it very miss matched but still stuck to a format to keep it looking professional. The reason that I wanted to keep the text styles mixed is because that seems to be a current trend within the illustration market and I feel as though this would appeal to a modern parent. I combined my own hand drawn typography with digital because I felt like too many hand drawn styles would just end up looking messy. In my learning agreement I stated that I wanted to improve my hand written typography skills and I feel like this project has really helped me with that, as I am now much more confident with drawing letters than I was before.  

Although the layouts were quite informal I kept them very similar for every page, as I wanted to keep a professional feel throughout. I also added a banner to the top of the page sticking with the muted yellow colour that I decided on with the name of the book and the page number on. I did this because I noticed that it was a common thing throughout books on the current market and I found that it really finished off the pages and brought them all together as one finished book.

For my last profile I decided that instead of choosing an artist to write about, that I would leave the profile, information and activity page for the reader to fill in so they could feel more inspired about art seeing their own pages amongst other great artists. I feel like getting them involved will make the book a lot more interesting for them.  

When I had completed all of the book I decided to add an extra bit to my book to make it feel a bit more special so I decided to add a sticker page to the back of my book. I feel like this adds a bit of extra fun for the young person reading it. For the stickers I decided to use the profile pictures of the artist as I felt it would be nice to have them all together in one place, I also thought that the shape of them was very fun and a bit quirky for a sticker and this fit right in with the overall style of the book.

Overall I am really happy with how the final product has turned out. I feel as though I have fulfilled my original intention and it looks exactly how I had planned in the beginning. I think that my ability to reach a professional looking standard has improved vastly from previous projects and this is something that I originally really struggled with. I think the strongest aspect of this project has been the strong use of hand drawn typography and the design of the front cover. If I was to re do this project I think that as well as submitting digitally I would attempt to make the final product into a proper book rather than just presenting a mock up. One last thing that I would improve if I was to re do this module is the back cover as I don’t think the design was as strong as it could have been.