Analysis
Oliver Jeffers illustrated this 2013 (to present) commercial for Kinder. The advert is hand drawn and painted using water colours and pencil. It follows a narrative of a mother and child and advertises Kinder's "tasty little treats" range of products.
The advert starts and ends as a harmony between real life products and illustrated pieces with an entirely illsutrated narrative in the middle. The commercial moves into a fully illustrated animation when the illustrated character interacts with the product.
As well as a television commerical Jeffers produced a series of posters for the advertising campaign.
Similar to the commercial the poster featured all handwritten type and is fully illustrated. There isn't a single piece of photography or typed text on the poster. The colour palette in the poster, and commercial, draws from the colour
palette used in the commercial, all adapted from the product: white,
brown, organge and blue.
Using colours from the product subtly keeps the visual of the product in your mind as you're associating the colours of the characters with the product throughout the commercial.
After looking at his advertisement campaign I then took to my book shelf and read through and studied his book 'Lost and Found'. Like his adverts artwork the children's book is drawn using pencils and painted with water colours.
The cover is very colourful. The palette uses contrasting colours with soft tones of the icy blues against bold, bright yellows and reds. The colours are friendly and grab your attention. There is an obvious separation between the characters and their surroundings, they seem very out of place in that setting, which from reading the story you learn they are.
There is some 'science' as to why the book cover is aesthetically pleasing. The image itself is split perfeclty into thirds with important information in each third. The top third has the boy's face, the middle third the penguin's and the bottom third has the book title and authorship.
This spread is has quite a graphic design quality to it. The soft water colour illustrations have been cut clean edged digitally and put into hard framed shapes. The artwork is presented in panels separated by text.
Whereas in contrast the opposite page spread has no cropping or background. The artwork stands alone against a stark white background. Whilst the design changes throughout the book the artwork style and handwritten typeface remaind a consistent throughout.
Again, vastly different to the previous spreads this spread is a full-colour page with the artwork entirely covering the page full bleed and the text being placed over it. There has been some consideraton for the placement of text in the artwork as it has been designed so and allowed for quite easy placement of text without taking away from the artwork.
Experiments
In my series of experiments I will explore the methods and style of Jeffers' work and approach to design in his children's books. I will be using an extract from the text (The Secret Garden) I'm using for my Final Major Project as a starting point for these experiments.
This is the artwork I'm going to be using in my experiments. I've used the soft pencil and water colours that Jeffers uses in his illustrations and retained his character traits and style.
As well as characters I've painted a background to use in my experiments using water colour paints. I considered Jeffers rule of thirds with his backgrounds so that I could experiment with design easier in my investigation. I could then also play around with both white backgrounds and coloured backgrounds, painted detailed backgrounds too.
In these experiments I will be looking at book covers and page designs.
To start I first experimented with book covers.
This first cover follows the guidelines set out by Jeffers book 'Lost and Found' using the rule of thirds for the artwork and placement of type. The typeface is also handwritten.
The separation of artwork and text in this subtle use of thirds makes a book cover effective and visually readable.
I again used the rule of thirds in this book cover, the design changed slightly with the inclusion of the robin and the girl being bigger. The typeface changed from handwritten to a premade fontface on this cover too to make it more eligible.
I created a range of book cover examples following on from this intial experiment.
I looked at exploring the graphic design elements to Jeffers work we saw inside of his books with the panelling of artwork on page layouts and cropping organic arwork into digital boxes and shapes. In this experiment the artwork is put into an invisible box.
I then altered the cover slightly by stretching it out width-wise to change the box into a band going through the middle of the book cover with smaller strips of white at the top and bottom of the cover. I didn't think this worked as well as the white boarder which framed the artwork nicely.
This experiment goes back to exploring the handwritten type but also the graphic design element of Jeffers work. The entire artwork, title and authorship this time are all condensed and put into the box with a clean white boarded the same width all around the image. I think it frames the artwork nicely but I preferred the authorship on the outside of the artwork in my previous experiment.
I experimented with coloured backgrounds/boarders. I felt the crisp, digital green didn't work as well as the white. It felt too harsh and noticeably digital against the artwork.
So I explored using a wash of green water colour instead which worked much better as it's softness complimented the artwork instead of clashing against it.
Following on from book cover experiments I looked into page design and layouts.
I rearranged the artwork in the panels and instantly the page reads better. There is more of a flow to the visuals and they compliment the text. I still feel the type looked out of place on this experiment.
I think in this example the digital type works better as the panelling of the artwork creates a guideline for the text to fit into and the handwritten type doesn't follow a ruled line and looks messy against the clean cut edges of the artwork.
I explored two panels this time. This reminds me of a graphic novel or video game with the interaction between the two characters, particularly with the positioning and different background colours. I think this works better than the three panels with text inbetween each panel and again not using the handwritten type works better here.
Evaluation: Oliver Jeffers' work illustrates children's stories at their best. His characters and soft water colour illustrations are so enticing to audiences and children. Jeffers uses colour importantly in his work, his books are colourful and his use of colour is effective in his stories. It doesn't stop at children's books this importance as I found out investigating his television commercial that the colour palette was very important. His use of colour helps you to understand the story, or product of the narrative you're reading. This was important when it came to my own experiments as I thought about the colour palette for the story 'The Secret Garden'. From researching into Jeffers approach to design and methods of creating illustration I have learnt a great deal about the significance of colour and also that handwritten type can become part of the artwork, words, type, they don't have to be separate things from the images. I also learnt a great deal about composition and page designs from studying his work.
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Bibliography
Artwork/books/TV
- Collins, H. (2005). www.harpercollinschildrensbooks.co.uk. GB: Harper Collins.
- Hodgson Burnett, F. (1910). The Secret Garden.
- Jeffers, O. (2013). Kinder Chocolate: Invention. GB: Passion Pictures.
- Jeffers, O. (2013). http://www.oliverjeffers.com/illustrations/kinder. Kinder Chocolate Invention. GB: Passion Pictures.
- Jeffers, O. (2013). http://vimeo.com/40932410. Kinder Chocolate Invention. GB: Passion Pictures.
- Jeffers, O. (2005). Lost and Found. GB: Harper Collins
- Jeffers, O. (2005). http://www.oliverjeffers.com/picture-books/lost-and-found.