Books for Breakfast

This weekend, I had the pleasure of working with Heather at Books for Breakfast. She reached out to me about designing a blog and Etsy banner for her, along with Etsy and Facebook buttons. I was so excited to start on Heather’s materials because her business name opens the door for so many neat artistic possibilities!

I thought my work with Heather would be a good way to outline the custom design process. Initially, she had the idea of depicting an open book with letters spilling out of it. I ran with this concept, ultimately coming up with this design:

Then, thinking that this may be a little too plain, I ran with the “books for breakfast” concept, combining an egg and a book:

(I have clearly been watching too many Once Upon a Time episodes … the Frog Princess-like story that comprises the text in the book spilled out of my brain at an alarmingly fast rate.)

I like to present these preliminary designs to clients so they can get an idea of what concepts I have, and I can get revisions and suggestions from them. In this case, Heather responded that actually she was thinking of perhaps having the graphic of a person getting ready to dig into a stack of books a la a stack of pancakes with syrup dripping down the sides. She was also very helpful in that she explained a little to me about the illustrations in books from the 70’s; generally, illustrators used three colors. She supplemented this with a Pinterest board, which as always was inspirational.

I toyed around with ideas for a little bit, and finally sat down to draw this delightful little fellow:

What a fun technique! I used a pencil to sketch him out, then used a heavy hand to draw dark shadows with plenty of texture. I wanted to keep him clean and cute, so I didn’t do much besides basic contouring. The fun part came when I pulled out the watercolors! My three chosen colors were yellow, brown, and white.

Next, it was time for the little guy to make his debut. We started him off on Heather’s blog banner:

…then as an Etsy banner:

When Heather saw the little boy, she also asked for a bookmark template, which I gladly made for her. We finished up with the Etsy and Facebook buttons for her blog:

I’d love for you to check out Heather’s [blog] and [Etsy shop] to see how everything came together — and also to see her amazing supply of vintage children’s books. She (and her seven-year-old) have excellent taste in reading material, and if you’re in the market, Books for Breakfast is a great resource.