Pearson Custom Library's "Out of School Time"

I wasn't sure which category this project fit in to, so I made its own category! I created the cover illustrations, cover designs, and cover printer files for a series of K-5 textbooks. Selected as a 2013 New England Book Show winner.

Keep reading to find out more about the process, or just start scrolling to see the finished pieces. :)

Project Background: Pearson Custom Library had an existing series of Student Edition and Teacher Edition book covers for their K-5 math program, and our Creative Department was contacted to create a new series of book covers for their K-5 reading program. The illustrations for the new covers needed to have same "feel" as the existing series, but should be noticeably different enough to distinguish between the two. The illustrations should show learning activities that students would participate in during school. Each cover illustration should have a specific grade level in mind, though ultimately our clients could choose any cover for any grade level. The illustrations for each edition should retain the characteristics of the existing math series: the Student Edition would be black & white line illustrations, so the students could color the book cover; and the Teacher Edition would be 4-color, and look like they've been hand-colored.

Process: Three in-house designers (including me) submitted character ideas and sketches for review by the team, and my sketches were selected for further development. I met with the program directors to discuss ideas for each cover illustration, and I coordinated with my design managers to create and update the project schedule.

After some research and brainstorming, I came up with a theme for each grade level, and created a sketch for each. When the team approved these sketches, I created the black & white and color illustrations for Kindergarten and 5th Grade (to show the spectrum of the grades). Once those were approved, I created the other four black & white and color illustrations. And once these were also approved, I set up the cover files by utilizing the existing series template and color palette, and updating the plaque design for the project specifications. The team approved the final book cover files, and I sent them to print vendor. After the team and I approved the soft proofs, the project went live to our clients!

I created all of the final illustrations digitally, to more easily accommodate any requested changes that may pop up in the approval process. The black linework is actually vector shapes drawn in Adobe Illustrator. To create a hand-colored feel, I painted and scanned some watercolor pencil washes, brought them all in to an Adobe Photoshop file, placed the Adobe Illustrator file as a "Smart Object" in to the Adobe Photoshop file, and used layers and masks to "color" in the linework.

Here are the final pieces! Please note that there is some extra space below the title in order to accommodate for the custom text that will be added by our clients: