Graphic/Illustration Tutorials

Having never written a cook book or constructed any form of publication I had a discussion with Ryan Mcleod, founder of Slurpp and Natalie Russell, an illustration tutor and children's book producer.

Ryan stressed to me the importance of finding inspiration to work from, something that I like the look of, existing material that could relate to what I want to produce. In a small tutorial we had a quick look at typography that might be a appropriate, along with some examples that have been shared on Bechance and Dribbble. Ryan suggested creating a mood board of all the items I liked and slowly narrowing it down to a style that can act as a base for my own design. He suggested a similar method to come up with a name for my product and the branding. I need to consider, evaluate and highlight the main aspects of my design in order to capture the nature of my product in a short memorable manner.

In direct relation to the cook book, it was suggested that I split this into two sections, one for parents and one for children. I should also pick a headline / feature font however should pick a more regular and simple-to-read font as the information should be the main focus of the book.

From an initial email with Natalie she explained to me that she has fairly little knowledge about something as specific as a children's cook book as she normally works on picture books and by their nature are designed to be equally weighted between words and image in comparison to a cook book which would be more information driven. She suggested decorated borders to correspond to the nature of the ingredients - i.e..e. place where the food came from, what the food looks like, what equipment / facilities you would need etc. She agreed with Ryan by insisting there would need to be a strong focus on lettering / type.

I met with Natalie to discuss these ideas further and explained to me it was important to ensure some continuity between my physical product and this additional element. Similar to my tutorial with Ryan we looked through existing examples but more focused on what would be appropriate to the age range my product is targeted at. Natalie explained I was far out of the picture book criteria so to seek inspiration from 'early reader' books.

I have found both these meetings very helpful moving forward with the part of my design and Natalie has offered to critique some of my prototypes to suggest improvements once I have a design.