Eric Carle

From my initial thoughts of illustrating children's books, before i initialized my idea on educational material my thought fell on 'the hungry caterpillar.' The shapes and creatures Carle creates are so interesting and beautiful to look at as an illustration on its own not just for a children's story book. The butterfly below hold so many different colours i almost looks as though it is glistening in the sun, it is far away form a real looking butterfly but i like this quality it adds to the hand crafted collaging he uses.

This book cover shows how his technique works across all animals shapes sizes and colour. This cover doesn't work as well some i have seen, because the quality is lost a little in the characters of he animals. A small second problem i have with it, is the type face the word flash card looks more hand written that the first two, perhaps if this had been consistent it would have worked much better.

Jenny Sue Kostecki Shaw

I accidently found Jenny Su and surprisingly when i looked at her portfolio she has produced educational posters, her approach to these was to be fun and interactive not just informational. All of the posters are different topics, but they all still have a similar feel to them, she hasn't stuck to the obvious detailed drawing, she has worked in a similar way to me, with collaging teh image and cutting it up digitally to fit the shape the wants to create. This is a much clearer may of using collage than i have, however i still want mine to look playful and hand crafted. Each poster hold so much information, but they dont look over cluttered, where your eyes dont know where to look. This element i have found can be quiet hard to achieve. I want to develop my work further by trying to follow a similar technique to Jenny Su, by blocking areas out with different shapes and colour.

This image is just to show you a close up of what the shapes look like, the clean cut collaged images, they look really pretty and work together really well.

Carolyn Gavin

I randomly stumbled across this illustrator and think she is amazing, i would love to produce work like this i actually love everything about them. I wont list everything i love however i will say what i want to take from them for my brief, the bright shapes and colours she has used all so different in shape and style to make the smallest of elements really interesting. The illustrated type working so well as an image, i like the idea of a fully patterned type face and a plain simple background.

I want to be her!

Steve Mack

I found Steve Mack researching for a different brief and felt his influence on this brief would be essential. Although this image doesn't show it very clear each parts of the characters are textured, he uses such bring colours and fun shapes to bring his characters to life. Although i wont be illustrating characters i still want to transfer this concept onto my illustrations. I dont particularly like solid colour vector images i just feel they are so digital looking, where as the images Steve mack has produced are closer to what your what you imagine in your mind when visualizing stories.

Here Mack has put his his illustrations together to form a poster, he doesn't often do this as normally his work are for children's books. However as im bad a layout and putting things together its really useful to see someone do work out of the ordinary for them. I think the way he has used image and type working in with the illustration works really nice and i feel for my to make my covers successful i need to put my image and type working together as, type is my weakness.

Abner Graboff

This is the third old illustrator i have found, these illustrations are in a really old book they are similar to Bernice Myers the really fast hand crafted look. Again only 2 colours have been used which would obviously cut costs, but in this case it bring the image as a whole rather than all over the place with so much happening. I do however thing the colours he has chosen are really dull and uninteresting, by even changing the mustard to a green shade would liven all of the images up.

This third image works really nice, their is hardly anything going on other than the banner at the top of the page, with all the detail here and information held under i think i'm going to take this approach for my book covers.

Catherine Byrne

I have posted these images to show what i really do NOT want to be producing, for my educational material, it is so unexciting i suppose it does its job, it just isn't even interesting to look at. I really don't want my work to posses this quality, it doesn't grab your attention, it doesn't make you want to pay attention and it definitely doesn't make you want to earn, so all the things i am hoping to achieve with my work that these don't.

Bruno Munari

These image are from an old italian artist Bruno Munari, they are so different and he has really exaggerated the images for the content of the children's books. This makes them so much more interesting taking over the page and jumping into the imagination on the child. Although these are really old illustrations, they would still fit in with a modern concept. i want to use this exaggeration and minimal illustration for my images.

Michael Perry

Michael Perry had some fab yes 'FAB' work, all of it seems to be so different but really interesting, there are different aspects from each of his pieces of work which i would like to take into account when creating my material. The first of the designs i have chosen is for the typography, the image and type are working together so well, but separate you would never imagine them working together they are so far apart from a design aspect. I really like the big bold shapes and bright colours used for the type its a really interesting concept.

The second image again is for the type, type working as an image, i struggle with type and layout and find it much easier to think of type as an image. Here perry has presented just this, i really like the mix of different styles and thickness of line, they contrast against each other creating more of an image than a collection of words.

I have chosen to include this image as one of my illustrations will be of the earth, Perry had illustrated the earth here with mini aspects of the earth, this is an interesting and different way of doing this, which makes the earth look more an image than a 'real life' earth, i don't want to move too far away from the earth looking real in my illustrations, but i do want the image to take the concept Perry has here of moving away from the exact structure and making it look more like a 'picture image.'

Im not going to be illustrating the content of the books but still i want the front and back pages to jump alive and make children want to look at them, these pages look clean and fresh i hope to transfer this onto my book covers.

Image type faces, as i mentioned earlier i want to use this concept for my type the material i will be producing, i want it to fit in with the illustration for each subject and act and an image not just type.

Bernice Myers

These book illustrations by bernice myers aren't typically the sort of thing thats inspires me or that i go for, but i found them and cant believe they are from the 50's they really don't look that old fashioned. What i like about them and want to take from this illustrator are the simplicity of the illustrations, they look so hand crafted yet there is still such a quality of control. I really like the fast drawn look the characters have, even the fast hand detailing in the scene in the second image, it still tells a story even without masses going on in the image.

Book covers

I have struggled to find illustrated education books for primary school children, the ones below i have found are used in some way in education for various ages. The first book is quite interesting, they have mixed fun illustrations and interesting type faces to grab your attention and make the book look more interesting. They have blocked out the title of the book so it doesn't fade into the background with it being so busy. I really like how they have found a type face to fit the theme the book presents rather than a general typeface everyone uses.

This second book i really dont like how they have laid out the illustrations, there are however small things about this cover that i like. The foot print is working really nice and links to the slogan of the book, however from looking at the book you would never guess it was for children aged 4 - 8 years or the content of the book. This is something i really dont want to apply to my covers. A second area i feel that doesn't help jump out at you is the colour scheme, this 2 colour does help cut cost, but its doesn't help this book remotely interesting to even pick up in a shop as a parent never mind a child wanting to open it.

The third cover mixed child like and modern illustration and type, i think the use of the top type face is really nice and helps you feel the book is for younger children, however this mixed with the modern font underneath doesn't work. I have had this problem myself, mixing a hand crafted type with a digital it just doesn't seem to sit right, i am still trying to work around this but i need to remember this when applying different information to my book covers.

This final book cover is for much younger that the age range i am producing for, however they have tried to grasp the imagination of a child with the cover and by using the bright colours and shapes it makes the cover so much more interesting that the second cover i have shown which are both for the same age. I really want to apply bring and inspiring colours to my products to help draw attention an interest to them.

Education posters

As one of my 'range' is to create educational posters i decided it was time to try and find some that already exist and see what does and doesn't work with them and use this when making my posters. I have actually found it really hard to find any at all, as teachers buy education material from special sales brochures, which i haven't been able to get my hands on, unfortunately to see some good material to evaluate. However i have found a few which are i have listed below..

This Egyptian poster is far far too cluttered even the backgrounds used are full of imager and texture, everything just seems to merge in together, with so many different areas to look at you get too confused an just look away, i wouldn't have the energy to look at this even if i was bored out of my mind and i'm not even a child. So i must remember not to keep the posters too cluttered holding vast amounts of information, its better to hold less and it be clearer than try and fit everything and anything on. I think the fact the colours are all so similar probably does help it either.

The second poster reminds me of something you would see in a doctors surgery waiting room for children to look at, a look i definitely don't want. Nothing jumps out ant you and looks remotely exciting and the chosen font used is typical of designers for child education material. I want to stick with the child like qualities but i don't want to use the typical/obvious fonts.

This poster is obviously for younger children, but you can see how they have used bright colours and interesting shapes to engage the children in learning the alphabet. The different patters and colours make the poster interesting to look at not just learn.

This final poster, again is something i would not want to be producing they have taken the basic and obvious route in designing the poster for maths. The areas i feel are the worst and dont want to use for my poster design, are the type faces the shadowed type is very old fashioned and to just simply look at is awful, secondly the background fade colour again old fashioned. Infact as i have been writing about this the more i realise there isn't anything good about this poster i shall be staying clear of this!

Childrens educational book covers