The design of a children’s picture book can help sell the story or support the story’s flow through the pages. The kid’s story designing company in USA makes book title, author and illustrator names are included on the front cover. You can use a display font to highlight the title. However, it should be easy to read from far away and with a small thumbnail.
Book Cover
The book cover should be appealing to its target market. While the cover illustration should reflect the story, it doesn’t have to show every character or action in the book. It should be simple. While the back cover should contain a minimum amount of barcode and price, it can also contain information that doesn’t fit within the book such as author and illustrator bios, social media information, and so forth.
Fonts
Choose a large, legible font for the pages (serif/sans serif) in a large size (16 pt). Although it can be tempting to choose a display font for the cover, it is best to stick to a highly readable serif/sans serif. You should choose a font with a playful or friendly feel. Children’s picture books often only contain a few sentences, a line of rhyme or a brief paragraph per spread or page. Make sure that all text fits within the space provided by the font size. To make a specific paragraph fit into an illustration, you may need to adjust the text size.
It is important that the text is clear and easy to read above the illustrations. You should have an area of light or dark color that you can use to add text to your illustration. It is possible to either lighten or darken the area to make it easier to read dark or black text, or to make it more readable with white or light text.
Margins
Even if your illustrations are two-page spreads with full bleed, it is a good idea to add margins. You might consider adding margins to each of the four sides (say, 0.5 inches to the top, bottom and inside). This will ensure that you don’t place text too close to either the gutter or the edges of pages. To create consistency throughout your book, align your paragraphs with the top or bottom margins.
Important elements such as faces, etc. should not be placed in the gutter. Sometimes, an illustration that spans two pages might have the most important character/action in the middle of it. In these cases, you may need to shrink or enlarge the artwork to make that part visible. To modify the artwork, you will need permission if you have not worked directly with the illustrator.
Colors
A consistent color scheme is best for children’s picture books. This is the starting point. The illustrations are composed of the artist’s original colors. You can create a color palette with the Color Theme tools within InDesign and choose colors from the illustrations. Other than the color in the illustrations, you can add color to text, page backgrounds and specific words. You can add color to pages that do not have illustrations, such as the front and back. This will ensure a consistent flow of colors throughout the book. Keep the same level of intensity as the illustrations, i.e. bold colors or soft colors.
The design process
It might seem that picture books for children are easy to design, as they have so few pages and words. Because are so brief, each word and every image is crucial! Designers have the opportunity to work with illustrators and authors in a unique way and to influence the flow of the story through text placement and color use. Enjoy the process of designing.
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