Designing a Picture Book Cover

In February, I sent 3 possible designs for the cover of Baby Goes Baaaa! to Egmont. The various possibilities were talked through, not just by the Editorial and Design team, but also the guys in Sales, since they have direct and regular dealings with the booksellers, so it's felt that they have their fingers on the pulse of what will sell.

The upshot was that this was the fave design:

...but that it needed tweaking.

The process is very much a team thing, so it's interesting to get more eyes on my ideas. For instance, the meeting brought up the fact that the bow on the lamb's head made her obviously a girl, which would restrict sales for boy babies (precisely the same thought process that I had when choosing the hero of Bears on the Stairs).

The publisher also thought that a baby-grow would be more clearly 'young' than my T-shirt. Plus they realised the towed slug on the skateboard was crying out to be stretched round onto the back, to create a 'wraparound' cover.

Above is the plan the designer sent back to me after their meeting. As you can see, they have swapped the skates for a scooter. They also liked my baby monkey from one of the alternative designs, and having the back gives us the chance to sneak him in!

This is my re-draw of their version:

I had to move the scooter backwards, because you lean forwards to ride one, which ruined the space for the bit of text by the lead, so I made it into a speedy twirl instead. Not sure if your can see, but I turned 'sounds' into 'sssounds' - just a little, fun idea.

I thought the romper suit looked a little 'straight', so I gave the lamb a funny, woolly hat, which I feel makes all the difference. Overall, it's less 'off-beat' that the rollerskate version, but I am happy with it. Lets see if Egmont are!