Creating illustrations during a Book Sprint
One of the highlights of producing a Book Sprint is counting on original illustrations that converse with the written content and reflect the authors’ language and vision for the book. An illustration can be a visualisation of a text, a diagram or some other visual that either gives new information or helps the reader understand the text.
So how can we make sure to include these visual aspects during such a fast-paced book production process? It starts with our illustrators Henrik Van Leeuwen and Lennart Wolfert coming up with a style guide (use of colors, logo, typefaces) for the book – or use the client’s existing style guide – together with our book designers and the participants.
Take a look at some examples of free hand-drawn sketches turned into illustrations during a Book Sprint:
from a diagram idea in a hand sketch…
…to a comprehensive illustration.
before and after: from sketch to illustration
before and after: from sketch to illustration
During the Book Sprint, the illustrators perform based on illustration requests from the participants. The participants will give their feedback on the illustrations created and illustrators will adjust them. Any visual style is possible as long as it can be achieved within the duration of the Sprint. Based on cover ideas from the participants or their own suggestions, the illustrators will design several covers for the participants to choose from.
some of the beautiful covers created by our illustrators
Illustrations will be presented as JPG and SVG, ready to be used in all kinds of media, e.g. print and ePub. Participants will often have existing material in Powerpoint format, which can be adapted. However, Powerpoint is not an output format that the illustrators can deliver at the end.
During a period of three days after the Book Sprint week, participants can still ask for edits to illustrations requested during the Book Sprint week. At the end of Book Sprint, the illustrators will finalize the illustrations to make the print-ready file of the book. We can also provide the illustrations as separate .svg vector or .jpeg files, but we cannot provide Powerpoint files and often no editable versions of the illustrations. It is possible to generate interesting illustrations from photographs, drawing or others if it’s the wish to use them as base. This was the case with the covers of Adopting and Operating Hybrid Cloud Data Centers and Hybrid Environments for Universities displayed above.
It’s an exciting moment for every author to see their book taking shape, and no doubt our illustrators are an important part of our mission to deliver a beautiful, accessible and entirely finished book at the end of each Book Sprint.