Finding an Illustrator for your Children’s Book

We’re often asked, “Can you recommend a good illustrator for my children’s book.” We love this question, because it heads off a very common problem faced by book designers.

The short answer: A good place to start your search for an illustrator is the Society of Children’s Book Illustrators at http://www.scbwi.org/

Here you’ll find serious illustrators who offer quality work, which is a necessity if you want your book to compete well against those released by major publishers. Good illustrators don’t work cheap, and that’s as it should be, since they possess a rare talent unavailable to the rest of us.

The longer answer: Over the years, we’ve worked on many books where the illustrations were provided by author. Often, these illustrations are not up to professional standards because they were created by a family member, or by a “cheap” provider that the author found on a freelance graphic design site.

Your book should be designed first, and then the appropriate illustrator hired to create drawings for the planned design. Often the reverse procedure is followed, which ties the hands of the designer and can result in a lesser quality book.

Your book designer can help you review illustrator portfolios to make sure they actually know how to draw (believe it or not, some don’t) and help manage the process so the illustrations provided are in the correct proportions for the page and the correct resolution and color mode for printing.

There are a lot of technical issues to consider, beyond just “liking” the illustrator’s style. Your book designer will be more than happy to help you through this process.

What do you want to know? What topics should we explore together? How can we help you along your publishing journey? Everyone here at 1106 Design wants to help. Post your comment here or email us at office@1106design.com