For this last update we were asked to compare four products, whether books or illustrations, by contemporary designers. The topic could be editorial, advertising-based and so on. I chose four children's books:
1) Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie.
2) The Incredible Book Eating Boy, written and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.
3) What the Ladybird Heard, illustrated by Lydia Monks.
4) The Bears in the Bed and the Great Big Storm, illustrated by Jane Chapman.
Design Product
Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes was a book I purchased earlier than the others as I needed a point of reference for my own work. Although it has not been published by Macmillan, the subject of the project, I found the art and narrative very useful and depended on it almost entirely for research - there is a good balance of vignettes and full page illustrations, and I thought Sara Ogilvie's was perfect for the story, which is about a rather misunderstood little girl who finds a huge rhinoceros at her kitchen table one morning.
As is evident from the above example and which remains consistent throughout the book and is present in much of her other work. The rhino in this story happens to be a purple one, and in fitting with this theme most of the line art in the illustrations are various shades of purple instead of black. There are exceptions such as when the main character and her family visit the zoo, but these I think are included so that the artwork isn't swamped with one tone - the colours are always subtle and complement each other perfectly. Ogilvie's main media implemented is coloured pencils; this is especially noticeable when she is adding detail such as hair, the rhino's ears and wrinkles in fabric. The colour therefore is bright and warm, often spilling over the lines, but this I think adds to the charm of each illustration; her style is quite untidy but never unrefined. There are dozens of tiny details that can be overlooked such as the bar code being shown across a toaster on the back cover and her previous book Dogs Don't Do Ballet, on which she also worked with Anna Kemp, being read to the main character at the end, which again simply serves to add to the content and make Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes work both as a piece of art and a children's book.
The Incredible Book Eating Boy is the only product I chose wherein the author Oliver Jeffers is the same person as the illustrator. I think this is significant in that not only is his writing very humorous and therefore suitable for children, but his use of text as imagery within his illustrations matches accordingly with the narratives. It tells of a boy who wants to learn everything in the world and begins eating as many books as he can find in order to do so.
With the exception of What the Ladybird Heard, which embodies Lydia Monks' discernible textured layers, The Incredible Book Eating Boy is also the only product that makes use of found materials and varied backgrounds, a staple of Jeffers' style. One reason why I am so fond of this book in particular is the use of diagrams, equations and snippets of other texts to form the bases of his illustrations before he hand produces the drawings over the top of them in layers of paint which remains a characteristic of his work even when his style has changed subtly over time. It is fitting that this story is about a book-eating boy, as Jeffers uses excerpts from dictionaries, line and graph paper and old maps amongst many others.
I was unfamiliar with Jane Chapman's work before I bought The Bears in the Bed and the Great Big Storm, but the cover caught my eye and upon looking through I loved the use of colour. The story is a cosy one about a family of bears who are trying to sleep through a huge storm, but are frightened by the noises and shadows outside their house. 'Cosy' is the word that I'd use to best describe the book as a whole, the use of warm, soft oranges and browns throughout both give a homely sense to the story and on most pages the highlight of a yellow lamp or candle create a safe point that is returned to after each bear becomes frightened of the night outside their house.
It is very different to both The Incredible Book Eating Boy and Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes in style and narrative but it appealed to me regardless because of its soft, warm-hearted tone and artwork. The line art takes a back seat as the application of colour for the bears and home are utilized as the main attribute. The lines in fact are often indistinguishable; Chapman uses very little black and there is instead simply a change in colour between the backgrounds, objects and characters, emphasized with the brush strokes and use of white highlights to differentiate between colours. I think it is more suitable for younger children than the other three, not that it is unsophisticated in any sense but the drawings are snug and familiar, and its repetition and gentle rhythm is ideal for being read aloud. This is similar to What the Ladybird Heard as this book uses rhyme and should best be read aloud for the narrative to be fully appreciated.
I associate the author Julia Donaldson best with her work alongside Axel Scheffler, notably on The Snail and the Whale and The Gruffalo. I do think there is a reason for this as his work is very recognizable and their work melds well. However Lydia Monks' art, which shares several stylistic features with Scheffler's is highly suitable for What the Ladybird Heard. The story is about a very quiet ladybird who saves the day when she discovers two men try to break into her farm and steal a prize-winning cow, with a lot of vocal animals in tow.
This book is slightly different to most of the others in that Monks has utilized mixed media; The Bears in the Bed and the Great Big Storm is entirely painted and Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes is pencil crayon-based with a few repeated patterns. What the Ladybird Heard is also unique in its inclusion of photography; for several of the images in the book Monks has photographed sheep's wool, leaves and clothing instead of flat colour. Although I found some of these a little heavy the chosen colour on the pages work well with her textures and Monks' photography never contrasts too strongly with the other surfaces.
This book was also the only one I found with fully illustrated end papers; Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes and The Bears in the Bed and the Great Big Storm both made use of a simple repeating printed pattern, while The Incredible Book Eating Boy is unusual in that the end papers are two single drawings depicting items of importance in the narrative. What the Ladybird Heard however has the entire farm as end papers, different at the end from the beginning as the narrative takes the book through to the ending.All of the books I looked at made use of differing sizes and fonts in the text, including examples of hand-produced type in Jeffers' case. His use of typography is another reason why I chose his book as it is an element I am interested in and the majority of his books contain hand-produced type in some form. None of the other three products implements text as image in this way; Rhinos Don't Eat Pancakes' only exception is the 'lost' sign for a missing rhinoceros and the entrance sign for the zoo, visited during the narrative. What the Ladybird Heard has a great example of hand produced type on the front cover, as each letter in the title is different in size, font and colour but other than differing sizes for the animal sounds in the bulk of the text there are no other examples of type used anywhere else. On several pages The Bears in the Bed and the Great Big Storm has vastly different sizing in font, especially for onomatopoeic words and to show emotion in the animals' speech.
Well that makes the word count and marks the end of my DD2000 project. I have to say it is a bit of a relief now I can concentrate on other commitments, but it's not been so bad :3 It's definitely made me look at illustration differently. I will be updating as much as possible in future but as I have a lot of work to catch up on I should really be doing that at the minute. -3-; I don't know when my next update will be but it hopefully won't be too long. Thanks for visiting~ <3
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