Children's Book Cover

We had to come up with a book cover entitled 'Animals from around the World'.

First of all I had a brainstorm in my sketchbook..

Then I had a good look around the  house, in the library and on the internet for information books for Children and there seemed to be an awful lot of photography based book covers.

However, I wondered if there a way of injecting some humour into the image, or a bit of information, to give the adult/child a bit of a hint of the bizarre animals and funny facts that might be inside the book!!

I chatted with lots of children who liked photos, humour, a bit of information, and the creating a title out of the animals themselves.

I liked the idea of separating the animals into body parts - funny noses, eyes ears - a sort of play on the Heads, Bodies, Legs game that I used to play as a child. 

I also decided that I would like to create a sort of Animal Explorer's Notebook idea with facts and sketches for my 2nd visual.

My 3rd visual was to be a play on the words.

The Heads Bodies Legs idea I decided would be  photography based, so I scoured the internet for funny body parts!

So the Body Parts ended up being Eyes, Noses, Skin, Mouths and tails... I wondered about the idea of creating little colour cards for each animal and pockets along the cover, so that the child could take out the card, turn it over to find out what the animal was, where it was from, what it eats, how big it is etc and then slot it back in. Children are obsessed with cards and collecting!

The 2nd Idea was the Explorer Pack idea.... I found some interesting facts and then sketched the relevant animals, added some compasses, telescopes, footprints, maps, and then scanned the whole lot in to create a notebook effect in the computer.

I wondered whether it would be better to incorporate a bit of colour, so I tried adding a photographic penguin... but I'm not sure..

This would, I think appeal to the slighter older child in the age bracket... my 7 yearold loved this one. My 5 yearold loved it as long as I read the facts to him!

The 3rd idea went for the slightly younger age group and was a play on the words - I tried to create the title out of the words 'Animals from around the World' - I sketched the idea first:

Then I scanned and coloured it, and placed it over a map that I had done in coloured crayons. I added a drop shadow to bring out the letters, but I'm not sure that this quite worked. I did the font on the tablet.

Finally I added a border around the edge. 

same thing with polar bear cleaned up
and no drop shadow

I think that the 3 ideas are very different in appeal and it would slightly depend on the contents of the book and the brief to know which would hit the mark best. I thought that the first one was rather similar to a lot out there, unless the idea of the pockets and cards was picked up. The 2nd 'Explorer' idea is my favourite, and would stand out - I think it would appeal to adults to buy their youngsters, and the facts would make the children want to open the book. The 3rd is obviously targeted towards the younger end of the spectrum, but I think it's cool colours and 'breaking the code' of reading the text would be appealing.