How to design a Children's Book Cover

I am relaunching my Scaredy Cats KickStarter project see it here - kickstarter.com/projects/shoorayner/scaredy-cat…

One thing that bothered me, once I had launched previously, was the cover. I loved it, but after a while I realised that it was probably not the right cover. The style of the cat on the front of the book, did not fit with the illustrations inside.

Publishers often recover books with different styles, but I thought maybe it was also a bit too sophisticated for the age group the books are intended for and said something different to what was inside.

So I spent some time trying to do a watercolour version, but couldn't get that right. In the end I decided to do a hybrid. Take the elements I loved about the first cover and add them to a physically drawn version.

The moral of the tale is that the first drawing is not necessarily the finished version. You can keep tweaking the design and a little time and distance is good - allowing you to see the design with free eyes.

With award winning illustrator, Shoo Rayner - subscribe for lots more drawing :) ➡️ bit.ly/Sub2Shoo

Everyone asks about the tools I use when I'm out using my sketchbook. here's a video to show you what and how I use them. youtu.be/QJwjV1FKdyg

The Pentel Aquash Brush is here in the Uk bit.ly/PentelAquabrushUK
and here in the US bit.ly/PentelAquashBrushUSA

Rotring Tikky Graphic in the UK here bit.ly/TikkyGraphicUK
in the USA bit.ly/TikkyGraphicUS

The Cotman sketching watercolour set is here in the UK amzn.to/1gNpZ8s
and in the US here: amzn.to/1gaG6qA

The Seawhite of Brighton a5 travel journal is here in the Uk bit.ly/SeawhiteJournalUK and here in the USA bit.ly/SeawhiteA5JournalUSA

Twitter twitter.com/shoorayner
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Website shooraynerdrawing.com

music by youtube.com/cleffernotes