Category Archives: rhythm

Design is a Dandelion

20 May 2013

13 Comments

by Janice Lovoos

{published 1966, by Golden Gate Junior Books}

I was in Seattle a few weeks ago. You remember the library, right?

I went to Pike Place Market, because of course, but also because flying fish and dudes in galoshes are a spectacle worth checking out. And I also wanted to get up close and personal with some bluefin tuna eyeballs.

There’s a real reason for that, trust me. But they didn’t have any tuna, so this happened: Screen Shot 2013-05-17 at 11.51.46 AM

There’s not a real point to that story except that I adore that tweet (and those two Favoriters) and it’s what I did just before I wandered into Lamplight Books.

It’s like I stole something. Fifteen dollars? Sixty quarters? It still has that magical, musty smell of hidden secrets. And it was mine in a fraction of a split second. That fast.

Because…behold:

 I’m in love. From the texture of a porcupine, to the form of mountains and weeds, to the repetition inside a squash, design is everywhere.

Design is a Dandelion ends like this, with truth and a charge:

Design is everywhere. It is for everyone. All you have to do is to learn to see it. Open your eyes and take a big, long look.

ch

Color + Colors

28 February 2013

22 Comments

I have no children. I have board books. Is this weird? Maybe. But these in particular are little graphic design studies. I will not literally try to chew them, but they are definitely droolworthy.

Do you know Alexander Girard? He was a midcentury designer, specializing in color and textiles. I’m crazy about the Nativity set at that link. And while most people have heard of Herman Miller, Girard was the designer that sizzled up their furniture line with his palettes. He said this, which made me fall in love a little: “People got fainting fits if they saw bright, pure color.” 

He did it anyway.

So this little book is a huge celebration of his style, color, and desire to make you faint and fall in it.


How about Charley Harper? He took a vibrant love of color from the natural world, and distilled that into his pictures. I adore that on first glance, whimsy and delight dances around, but a longer gaze reveals storytelling ingenuity. He said, “When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see feathers, fur, scapulars, or tail coverts—none of that. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior, and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures.”

And this tiny treasure explodes with his search for endless possibilities. And it’s lovely.


Was I right about that whole droolworthy thing? I know.

ch

Sleep Like a Tiger

19 February 2013

16 Comments

SleepLikeATiger

written by Mary Logue; illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski

{published 2012, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt}

IMG_1966

So you have to do a couple things for me. First, dash off to the library for a copy of this book. Better yet – the bookstore, cause you probably won’t want to give it back.

And then visit the always delightful Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast’s post. She’s got final spreads and sketches and you’ll probably never claw your way out of that web of beauty.

When I got my hands on this book late last year, I fell in love. Why I was blindsided by its Caldecott Honor nod I have no idea! Of course it won. Can’t wait to see a version with that shiny silver sticker.

ElementOfDesign.Texture

But while you’re gone or while you’re here, think about texture, and how it gives life to most anything we see. In design, texture represents on a flat plane what your fingers could touch were it three dimensional.

IMG_1962

You’d eat a shiny red apple before you’d eat a furry, rotted one, right? We respond to texture.

But in art, texture adds a layered depth to whatever story is being told, and that’s why Sleep Like a Tiger is so beautiful to behold.

IMG_1964

The battle for sleep is not as simple as mom and dad saying so + child + pillow. I’m not a parent and I know that much! It’s complicated, messy, and doesn’t always make sense. It’s dreamy. And so is the cast of characters that is larger than life and also snuggled up in this wee person’s bed.

IMG_1967

I love the overlapping lines and patterns. And the scrapes and smudges and intricate detail. These pictures are warmth wrapped up in a blanket with a side of hot tea.

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And side note: I adore the recurring circles in the pages. A wheel, a sun, a moon – all subtle reminders of the cycle of sleep.

ch

Robot Zombie Frankenstein!

23 November 2012

17 Comments

by Annette Simon

I am kookoo crazy bonkers for this book. Like, we’re talking nuts.

When I opened this book at the Candlewick Booth at ALA this summer and saw THOSE ENDPAPERS, I did this move: slam the book shut, say ‘no.way.’ about a billion times, and make my eyeballs about five times their normal size. True story. {You can probably ask Dianne de Las Casas, although at the time I think she was ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the lovely Tammi Sauer‘s Princess In Training!}

Anyway.

I love this book. I love its unpredictability, its wacky pace, and its larger than life robots who have larger than life imaginations.

{And its author, Annette Simon — I love her, too!}

And I love, love, love the smorgasbord of shapes. Even the shape of the book itself is a big blocky square. Well, maybe it’s a slightly squished rectangle.

I’m not busting out the ruler on a holiday weekend!

You can’t tell me that his expression isn’t absolutely hysterical, can you?!

Remember those endpapers? They are a breakdown of all of the various robot parts. So brilliant. You could make this: (!!!!!!)

(image from this fun post!)

And I don’t want to give away the ending, but there’s a treat involved that makes this book an extra special read this tasty time of year. Read this book. Prepare for a zany adventure. Make that robot above, too!

P.S. — A huge heart shaped thank you to Candlewick for sending me this book. All thoughts are still my own. 

AND!

Speaking of robots — congratulations to LAURA S.! Did you win the Boy + Bot giveaway? AFFIRMATIVE! Email me your address, and these goodies will hit the road!

Don’t Squish The Sasquatch

6 October 2012

16 Comments

words by Kent Redeker, pictures by Bob Staake

This book came in the mail in a box from my beau.

I tweeted this the other day: Some boys buy their girls flowers, chocolate, or fancy purses. Mine buys picture books.

Coolest endpapers ever? That’s saying a lot, since I’m a bit kookoo for them, but just look at that sasquatch. His spindly legs and arms, a dapper bow tie, and that hat especially…that hat kills me. Cool that he’s looking towards the right, right? Since that’s the direction we read and move through the book? Cool.

And the setup. All this suave sasquatch wants is to ride Mr. Blobule’s bus. Without being squished.

And after his introduction on the endpapers, and the spread with the setup…then we get to the title page. So unusual! So interesting.

Have you ever taken a photo of the horizon at sunset or sunrise? Maybe you even get all fancy with your composition and use the rule of thirds? Horizontal lines are calming, stable, restful.

But diagonal lines?

They suggest movement and action, and the frantic call of DON’T SQUISH THE SASQUATCH has a lot of extra oomph in these illustrations.

His arms are flailing and his teeth are tilting and the buildings are slanted. All of those diagonal lines add depth and interest to the picture. And below, even Mr. Blobule’s bus is bouncing towards one side. Action and movement, packed into pictures, wrapped in the battle cry of DON’T SQUISH THE SASQUATCH!

I love this book. So will there be squishing? Or something else?

Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth

27 September 2012

21 Comments

written by Emily Haynes, pictures by Sanjay Patel

{Please, please, please…if you live in San Francisco, GO SEE THEM at the Cartoon Art Musuem on October 4th. Please! For me.}

Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth is based on a legend in Hindu mythology, but this version has jawbreakers! And a mouse pal! And SPECTACULAR illustrations!

Spectacular is really an understatement. I don’t think I know a word that can contain how spectacfantasterrificawesome these pictures are.

Endpapers that look like blueprints and sketches set the tone for a fresh story, enhanced so beautifully by shape and line.

From the title page on, this book will knock you out graphically. You will see stars (shape!) and vibrating birdies (movement!) flitting around your brain.

Ok. Let me back up a minute. Do you know Darshana Khiani? You should. She reviews books on her blog and always shares gems. And SHE is a gem. We met at the LA SCBWI conference in 2011, but what we didn’t know is that we would bump into each other over and over again online this year and become fast friends. So cool. Darshana emailed me a couple of weeks ago and told me I had to stop, drop, and roll myself to this book ASAP.

I love that she thought I would love it. I love that she was right. And I love that she suggested doing a joint review on it today.

That’s right! More book bang for your buck! So be sure to head over to her place for more of Ganesha and Mr. Mouse.

So much hops off the pages of Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth that my brain hurts to know where to begin. From the title page up a few pictures, to the repeated circles on the illustration above, shape dominates the pages. It’s a smorgasbord of circles, squares, and triangles.

Oh, this page. After every handful of illustrations, your eyes land on a picture like this one. The bright colors quiet for a moment, and these particular pages are striking in their stark contrast. White text, white graphic elements, and one bold, rich color. There’s something about pacing here, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that happens, but aesthetically, the balance is just outstanding.

A story about a sweet tooth begs for a decadent color palette, and these hues are just plain tasty and delightful.

Get this book. (Listen to Darshana, even if you think I am bonkers. She has good taste.)

rapido

Rapido’s Next Stop

Featured

by Joëlle Jolivet and Jean-Luc Fromental; published in English by Abrams Books For Young Readers.

Rapido’s Next Stop is slightly odd, sure, but it’s wholly mesmerizing. Its size and heavily weighted cover and pages are the first indicators of something a bit unusual.

The title page reveals a list of Rapido’s deliveries, and slyly asks you to join him on his route.

No, really…join him on his route! Following his red van on each page leads to the discovery of flaps to lift and riddles to solve. Remember those items from the title page? Each of them is delivered, but its word is replaced with a symbol. The rhyme on the flaps is sometimes a bit rusty, but I’d blame that on translation. Even still, it’s entertaining and smartly done.

The reader gets to work in this book, helping Rapido at each stop, and puzzling out the riddle as well. That experience, paired with the oversize nature of this book, leads to a very tactile interactivity.

And the color palette! Oh man. I adore Joëlle Jolivet’s strong style. The thick stroked black lines, filled in with vibrant and saturated hues (but not too many!) are so beautiful. (And her book Coloriages is just plain whoa. My rusty French tells me that means coloring pages? It’s a lift-the-flap coloring book, with the same weighted black lines and it is stunning.)

I love that there isn’t too much color to compete with the hustle and bustle of Rapido’s city. The rhythm and pattern and noise of the city is enhanced by the color, rather than confused by it. Here’s one full (drop dead gorgeous) spread:

And the colors used? Red, Green, Blue, Orange. That’s it. Red and Green are complements, as are Blue and Orange. They live directly opposite one another on the color wheel.

That’s so yesterday’s color news. Have you ever heard of a tetrad color scheme? Sure, everyone knows complementary, maybe even analogous, but if you’re ever at a cocktail party and need to sound really fancy, just drop some tetrad knowledge on them.

If you place a rectangle or a square onto the color wheel, the colors at the resulting corners can be used to create a tetrad color scheme.

Boom. Red, Green, Blue, Orange. It’s balanced, pleasing, and increases the amount of color contrast found in just a plain old complementary color scheme. Perfect for Rapido’s ride.

(And now Rapido has made me hungry for fancy French breakfast.)

Henri’s Walk To Paris

9 August 2012

22 Comments

So Saul Bass {1920-1996} illustrated this. You know him, even if you think you don’t.

Recognize any of these?

Saul Bass undoubtedly has a powerful legacy of corporate logo design, but he is also considered the father of the title sequence. I can’t say that I was well aware of him before I was a motion graphics designer, but as an animator, I am very influenced by his strong use of line and his bold color palettes.

{You can see a roundup of his title sequences at Art of the Title.}

And that’s fancy and whatnot, but then he created this sparkling kids’ book.

Henri is just a little French garçon who dreams of Paris, but lives in Reboul. He packs up some cheese, a carrot, and a piece of bread and walks himself there. But {SPOILER ALERT!} he doesn’t make it. A little bird disrupts his navigation, and he ends up right back in Reboul. But Henri? Thinks he made it, and thinks Paris is quite like home. And we love him for that.

In graphic design, unity is the quality that ties individual elements into a beautiful whole. Me talking about Saul Bass is like a dirty sock puppet oozing with glue and googly eyes having an opinion on Jim Henson. He’s a master craftsman, and so let me just show you some moments I love.

Check out these consecutive spreads. The typographic element that reflects the title IS Henri. And from one page to another, there he goes, walking off to Paris. This graphic drives your eye forward and invites you to dive into this book. And of course it tiptoes left to right. It’s how we read, and it simply signifies forward motion. Smart is an understatement.

He doesn’t clutter this illustration with a window sill, curtains, or many details of the room inside. It doesn’t matter. The story is outside. This is a brilliant use of negative space.

Henri’s tiny house, contrasted with the vast world beyond. And color…green and red are direct opposites on the color wheel, so the tiny pop of red is a perfect choice to offset the mass of green.

Soothing pattern repeats in those thousands of trees and the zoo full of animals.

A reminder of the cover, a peek into Henri’s walk. And below, a shift in perspective and point of view.

So Henri leaves home and returns again. Likewise, Saul Bass’ pictures ramp up to the climax of the story, and repeat again as Henri heads home. That same window repeats, that same wide shot of the tiny white house sits still again, only with different text for a different time in the story. It’s a detail that’s hard to show in pictures, but on an overall visual read of the story…it’s magnificent.

Henri’s Walk To Paris in reprint is a gift I didn’t even know I was was on my wish list. It’s joining this monster on my coffee table-slash-corner of my desk.

The Woods

5 July 2012

9 Comments

I was unfamiliar with Paul Hoppe before I picked this up on a recent trip to Vroman’s. (Which, by the way, has the greatest kids’ department EVER. Forget Disneyland on your trip to Southern California, hit up Vroman’s!)

But back to Paul Hoppe. The Woods is a bedtime adventure with a delightful twist. The page turns add suspense, the art creates texture and warmth, and the end is wholly satisfying. A bit of Where The Wild Things Are hops around through the pages too, which is especially sweet now given Mr. Sendak’s recent passing.

What initially attracted me to this book was the striking cover and how it wraps around to the back as well. It’s almost cyclical, with the fearless boy charging to the right, and a hint of what’s to come reaching in from the left.

And because I’m a sucker for endpapers, this got me:

Black is such an unusual choice for a dominant color on a picture book cover, and what made it jump off the shelf to me at Vroman’s. But for a bedtime story, for a little boy who is fearful of the dark, this choice allows space for him to act, to tremble a little, and to ultimately be BRAVE! The contrast between the stark black and the bright lime green is gorgeous.

The same is true within the illustrations — not in two very different colors, but in the bigness of the characters he meets and his own small size.

When we first meet the big scary brown bear and the two scary giants, they are larger than life on the page. The composition is so striking here, and the texture of the watercolor paper softens their big scary blow, should you need a little comforting.

And as it turns out, those big scary nighttime creatures aren’t so big and scary at all. Contrast helps to exaggerate what he sees in his imagination, and contrast serves to wrap up the words and pictures in a very dear bedtime package.

Reading the pictures closely throughout the book makes this initial page especially exciting on a return trip to it. Lots of fantastic moments exist in this early illustration, foreshadowing all of the exciting events to come. Enjoy this one — put a trashcan on your head and embrace the darkness!

Stuck

8 June 2012

23 Comments

It’s IMPOSSIBLE to not love Oliver Jeffers. Remember his mustache?!

Well, listen to him read Stuck, and prepare to be enchanted:

I can’t follow an act like that, but let me tell you a few things I love about this book.

1: The endpapers. What a great grid of all of those THINGS that Floyd flings up into the tree.

2: The type.

The handwritten text is an excellent choice for the pictures. The scribbled words have a tactile, lifelike quality that matches the vibrancy of the art so perfectly.

3: The easter egg.

I’m not one to linger on copyright pages since my librarian days are behind me, but check out this little gem straight from the mouth of Oliver Jeffers:

{The art for Stuck was created by compositing various scribbles and blotches of paint, made on small pieces of paper,  all together inside of my computer. This is because I needed to move studios in the middle of making the art, and using this approach seemed like a good idea.}

4: This line.

5: This fakeout mess-up.

6: This spread, that texture, those clouds.

7: That it’s FOR SOMEONE NICE.

Someone like you! I have two copies of Stuck, which is certainly due to having no self-control around picture books and many looming stacks. I’d love to send it to you, and I promise not to throw it in a tree first.

I’ll assume the mailman got down out of that tree in order to deliver it to you.

Just comment on this post by Tuesday, June 12 at midnight PST. I’ll draw a winner with the help of my trusty buddy, random.org, and you can add this to your own looming stack of picture books. It will be a great addition, promise.