PETER PAN:
ILLUSTRATION / GRAPHIC DESIGN COLLABORATION
For this brief I had to create a font cover for J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Some things that I to keep in mind for this project was that I had to be prepared to change parts if my design in case the graphic designer needed to move anything or didn't like my design, for whatever reason. To allow changes to be made, I produced this piece in Procreate, and everything was on separate layers. I also had to leave room for The authors name and the book title.
I started out my process by finding inspiration, from current children's books with the target age of 8-12. I searched through the children's fiction section at Waterstones, and these books appealed to me the most:
All these books have many things in common. Firstly, they all include a font that appears slightly handwritten. It's not messy, but not entirely neat either. Secondly, they all use the primary colours. This may just be a coincidence but it is quite often that children's books use the primary colours as they add brightness to the front covers which creates excitement. This then attracts the target audience.
The first part of my process was to listen to the audio book and sketch and take notes as I was listening. I wanted to make sure I stuck to the original description of Peter Pan rather than be inspired by any other adaptations of the character. I really enjoy drawing faces and character design so I felt confident in drawing Peter, himself as the front cover. I really liked the description of the sky in the start of the novel so wanted to replicate it in some way in my work. Using the two designs from my sketchbook I created two rough ideas that would include the night sky (below).
I really like the concept of both of these designs, however I did feel that the second design wouldn't allow the Graphic Designer to have as much freedom with text. The first design was also a based on a specific scene taken from the book where Peter falls asleep whilst he is flying as he is showing the children the way to Neverland. This design is also a lot easier to make a back cover for, as it can easily wrap around. Below is what I made in response to this.
THE COLLABORATION:
I showed the Graphic Designer my inspiration and how I pictured this piece to go. WE both agreed on finding a text similar to the ones I found. However, we felt that they all came across a bit too clean and neat, so we compromised. When we decided on a text that we liked the most, we transferred it over to procreate so that I could trace over it in a slightly textured brush. This meant that it appeared slightly more hand drawn and was the right amount of uneven.
For the image I had to remove some of the stars to allow the text to fit, and dropped the Peter Pan illustrations slightly lower on the page, along with the clouds and Tinkerbell.
To create the back cover all I did was copy the background of the front cover and create a new cloud to match up to it. To create the spine was the exact same process, except on a much smaller scale.
For the rest of the text we found a font that worked with the title and just typed it in rather than tracing over it again, this time. As you can see there is a slight shadow behind the text on the back of the book. we had issues with the placement of the text and the stars around it, but the back didn't look right with stars missing, so we decided to make this area darker, for the text to sit on. I am really pleased with how this book cover came out, I also had a really pleasant experience working as a team on a piece of work. Working together has allowed me to add featured to my work as well as use softwares I would not have known how to use if I was to have worked on my own in this project.
