Count with Elmo Covers

 So for this week I was assigned to design three Sesame Street book covers for a book called Count with Elmo. This will be a book that will teach children to count from 1- 20. Here is my original sketches for my covers. The measurement for the book is 10 x 10 inches.

 Idea 1: This was my first idea. I was researching and studying the shapes and patterns of numbers. EX: 3, 0, 2,8,6, and 9. Most of them being a round or curvy shape wanted to incorporate the same style throughout the book, especially the cover. I deiced to use circles because I considered them to be fun,welcoming, and overall exciting  for children. The first design of this cover is in the bright Elmo red. My art director suggested we try blue as well.

Idea 2: I thought a great way to design a counting book is to have children count colorful fun objects. The cover has 3 recognizable characters: Cookie monster, Zoey, and Elmo. Here I have them running through a park flying kites. I chose a lot of blue in this cover because it was very soothing and easy going. This cover was meant to be image heavy, which is why I put the title under the logo in the top left corner.

Idea 3: This is the third cover which had a lot of the same elements as my second idea. However instead of counting objects I wanted the child to count the numbers on the page but have a miniature Elmo next to the number. Here he is performing tasks/ posing next the the giant number.EX: 1 he is running with a single kite, 2 he is surrounded by 2 presents, and in 3 he is trying to catch several butterflies. Out of all three of my ideas this one I deiced to be very simplistic (and let Elmo and the Numbers do all the talking).

EDITOR'S CHOICE:
Later on I was in a meeting and there I discussed all three of my ideas my editors,creative directors, and art directors. We have narrowed down my ideas into two to present to Sesame Street representatives for next week on Tuesday.

On the right are corrections and notes. The final image is the cover we decided to go with.

 Here is the second idea. We decided to go with my Idea 3, but re formatted the cover. We chose to stick with the simple cover and lose the miniature Elmos and Elmo's signature. The font I went with was called Tykewriter, this font is very child-like. I also suggested to make the two transparent. Also Elmo and the number 1 will be dicut and lift.

The rest of the images are the differnt styles and colors tests.

This is the final cover we will present on Tuesday. Here the number 1 is a bright yellow that contrasts with the royal blue. Also I make the number 3 red because I felt like it had a "sandwich" effect and created an easy pattern. The number two is a transparent green, it's opacity is at 60%.