Archive for the ‘art direction’ Category

Logo design

I recently wrapped up a fun little project creating a logo for Life Coach, Kendra Levin. She was really great to work with, and it was a fun change from my book cover design work. We worked together to create a simple icon that embodied the intuitive spirit of her life coaching business through color and type. I combined hand-lettering with a font to give it a personal, yet down-to-earth vibe. She’ll be using this logo on her website, and in some of her printed promotional materials.

 

Kendra is truly amazing. Please stop by and check out her website!  http://www.kendralevin.com/Blog.html

 

New lettering projects

I’m excited to share a few recent hand-lettering projects. These were all done for book covers over the last few months (the book cover process can be lengthy, and often have to wait for some time before sharing these projects-so it’s always an exciting reveal!)

 

SECRETS AT SEA is a wonderful middle-grade novel by award winning author Richard Peck. And I was lucky enough, as the jacket designer, to get to work with the fabulously talented Kelly Murphy on her amazing jacket and interior illustrations. (She’s so wonderful! Please check her out at http://www.kelmurphy.com/)

 

The nature of the story and the art lent itself to a hand-lettered type style, so my Art Director commissioned me to create the title. I’m happy to share, too, that this super sweet book has been getting 4-star reviews!

 

cover illustration © Kelly Murphy

 

Over the summer I also worked on a lead title for Sourcebooks. The project has since been postponed and I’m not sure I’ll have the opportunity to revisit the design/image, so for now just giving a peek at the title type I created. This is a great book, and I really loved working on this one. I’ll be excited to see how the final ends up.

 

 

And this last one was initially part of the Sophie’s Mixed-Up Magic illustrations in initial rounds before they were killed.

 

Illustration vs. Photo

This summer, I shared an illustration project that had gotten killed—it was a 3-book middle-grade series for Penguin. I wanted to make another post about it, now that the new covers have been finalized, because I had the unique position in this case of being the illustrator, as well as the designer & art director—and it proved to be a very interesting experience.

 

Being a full-time staff designer, I had to pitch myself anonymously to my publisher to get this illustration assignment. I was thrilled to get the job and had a great time creating final art for 2 of the books. I also, however, had to sit through the big sales meeting where they ultimately decided that photography was a better direction for this particular series.

 

I know to some of my illustration friends, it sounded like torture to put myself directly into that meeting! But, having 8 years of experience in a big publishing house I know that feedback is just part of the creative process and not always a reflection on if the art is good or not; Rather it’s a decision on what is best for the project based on genre, trends, competition, author sales, positioning…and about a zillion other things. I’d being lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see my art published for the final book, but I still completely enjoyed creating it. And, as a designer my challenge became solving the project in a new way (there’s always more than one good way!) So, I got to put on my Art Director cap and do a photoshoot for the final covers. The shoot was so much fun (come on, how often do you get to photograph a little girl on a flying carpet?!) and ultimately I am still pleased with the outcome of the covers. All around, everyone in house—as well as the author—was happier with these sleeker, more mass-commercial photographic packages.

 

The books go one sale next June, but since they are already listed on Amazon, I wanted to share the final covers as well as a little of the back story. Here’s 2 of them-side by side with the illustrations I had originally done. You can see I still was able to incorporate some of my swirly, decorative illustrated elements into the background.

 

 

All in all, it was a fun and interesting project for me, from both my viewpoints as an illustrator and a designer/art director. I definitely feel like having the behind-the-scenes look at a project like this is so beneficial for me in understanding the publishing industry overall. …And the books themselves are really cute! Check ‘em out! :)

All artwork copyrighted. Please do not use without permission