Word Project Press Workshop Flyer 2015

Hanging On: The Great Depression through a Child's Eyes

The Front Cover Design:

Hanging On is based on childhood memories of Marian Wolfe, who will turn 90 yrs. old soon after it is published. I was so excited when I first saw this illustration, especially when I learned that the illustration for this book was a watercolor painting of a photo of Marian and her brother.

After talking with the author, we both agreed the target audience for her book was teachers and parents of elementary aged children. We wanted to let these "potential buyers" know that this book was a historical account about how one family survived during these very hard times. Because all the elements of the painting were part of the stories in the book we wanted to keep them intact, but at the same time I needed to make sure the reader's eye would not be distracted by them, but stay focused on the children – and maybe the chickens, too.

By separating all the parts of the illustration into about 20+ layers I was able to fine tune the elements to make them all work together. I removed, moved, lightened up or toned down any colors, elements or shading, etc. that would take my eye away from the children. My tools of choice were the eraser tool, the selection tool the hue/saturation tool for starters. (Notice the placement of the chickens on the front right is closer to the children? That would been extremely difficult to pull off without the new "content aware" fill in feature.)

This book cover from the '30's was my inspiration for the title layout which I found online. (My search was: image book covers children 1930)

The Back Cover Design: 

     Because this is going to be a children's book we wanted teachers to recommend, we needed something fun on the back to spark their interest. I asked the author to send me a few illustrations that would be in the book. Something with an old car in it maybe, as kids like cars... especially ones they don't see every day. The drawings were wonderful, but I was a bit overwhelmed by the details, as again, they were much too complicated to use for the cover. They both represented major events in the story so I had to make them work. I got her permission to simplify them.

So I ended up taking out most everything but the cars. It was tricky to get all the white out of both drawings so I could put in a colored background. The "select highlights" was helpful with that. I did not include them in the selection and then used a tool called "Puppet Warp" to fix the angle.

The Final Cover:

So below is the finished cover.  It took some doing to figure out how to make the marquee and the spine look kind of old, but I was able to do that mostly with the Hue/Saturation feature and a few of the special effects layered together. I am a huge fan of the eraser tool as it has an infinite amount of settings as well.

To get the type to go around the drawings I used a technique I learned 15 years ago in one of my first graphic arts class. I thought Adobe might have had a more modern way to do it now a days, but the old way works perfectly, so I guess they couldn't improve it.

Thanks to the illustrator's talent and the author's willingness to allow me to bring my ideas to life... I think the cover totally works!

–Melody Baker, January 2015