Thursday, 14 January 2016

Emil and the Detectives: Further research and thumbnails

The first slide of images contains research I carried out before Christmas; the very first aspects of the story that I discovered, and elements that I touched on. I have come to realise that I probably didn't do this in the correct order, as I didn't properly deconstruct the brief and pay attention to the requirements of the brief, however I carried that out today.

Brief Deconstruction

What do we have to do?

Design a whole new cover look for Emil and the Detectives to a new generation of readers.

Who is it for?

Young readers; children between the age of 6 and 10 approximately.

Important themes

  • mystery
  • suspense
  • excitement
  • adventure
  • good morals
  • lost and found
Deliverables

1 x Cover incorporating the A PUFFIN BOOK logo, and specific to the design template B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine width 12.5mm

What does it stand for?
  • Needs a point of difference, something fresh and uplifting
  • Strong use of typography 
  • An imaginative concept and original interpretation
My findings 

I took a trip to Waterstones to have a look at the children's book section and a few of the covers caught my eye. These in particular had bright colours and an interesting subject matter displayed on the cover. On the contrary, I was drawn to the covers of the Phillip Pullman books, using a two colour palette and giving the visual effect of a linocut. Another of the two covers that I admired were the London Eye Mystery due to the clever use of perspective and line of sight, and Heidi for the combination of simplistic vectorised shapes and springtime colour scheme. I noticed that there wasn't a huge amount of mystery/detective books for children (or perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough?), but perhaps there is a gap in the market for these kinds of stories.

I don't know if this is just my opinion, but I do feel as if there is a slight generation gap with book illustrations for detective and mystery books. The Enid Blyton books, and others in this generation that were popular in the mid 20th century possess a very old fashioned and traditional tone of voice, mainly focusing on realistic portraits of the characters in a particular scene of the book. But as the decades went on, nothing really stood out to me; the covers weren't too exciting and presented a fairly mediocre stylistic quality. 

The contemporary mystery book covers that I discovered (last slide) were a much more accurate reflection of today's generation, although some of them in particular didn't communicate their genre very clearly e.g. Smart. 
Some of the integral elements that I picked up on were:

  • Use of silhouette
  • Some dark colours to demonstrate an element of fear
  • Illustrating a scene of the book-this will intrigue the audience
  • Including a main character
I gathered that is difficult to find the balance of making the book stand out by using bright colours, yet creating an element of suspense by using darker colours, for example Coraline gives off a scary, dark and gothic look without presenting the theme of adventure, which is integral to Emil and the Detectives. 

Sketchbook work

I started out by drawing some of the most symbolic elements within the story, for example the statue, the horn and the seven pounds, and eventually developing some of my initial sketches like the Berlin scene. I initially thought that a magnifying glass and footsteps were a great idea, as they would inform the readers that this is a mystery book, creating excitement.

I showed my work to my tutor and she thought that they were a bit too cliché and Sherlock Holmes-esk. Which is completely fair enough, and I needed to do some more research. She suggested that I look at the pre-war movement of constructivism to reflect the age and setting of the story, but I haven't as of yet as I wanted to emphasise one of the brief requirements being to aim this at a new generation of readers. If I were to base my illustrations on constructivism I would feel as if my work was very backward looking, not taking into consideration the characteristics of todays young and low-attention spanned audience.

More research

My tutor suggested that I have a deeper research of todays contemporary illustrated book covers for children. The Guardian had an article on classic puffin books that had been redesigned in the last year, and some of them were absolutely stunning! http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2015/jul/15/a-puffin-book-in-pictures
I was also pleased to discover that Emil and the Detectives was on there too, illustrated by Matt Hunt. It is a fantastic fresh minded take on some of the original covers, especially with the mustard yellow background and bold, black typeface. The use of characters is really clever too, dressing them in traditional German clothing from the 20's, yet using a cartoon-like stylistic quality that a young audience would approve of.

Productivity Plan

  • Explore less cliché themes
  • Play around with colour
  • Keep drawing!
If I take into consideration this more recent research, I should hopefully be on the right track to developing an exciting book cover for Emil and the Detectives

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