Children’s Picture Book Design Tour of the Cuddleecats and Mummy’s Biggest, Best Birthday Surprise Ever!

I first connected with Cindy in July 2023. Although Cindy is no stranger to creating quality art, Cuddleecats was her debut book and she reached a point where she realized she needed the help of an experienced picture book designer. And I'm so glad she chose me!

Book Title: The Cuddleecats and Mummy’s Biggest, Best Birthday Surprise Ever!

Author-Illustrator: Cindy Wider

Publisher: StuartCindy Art

Trim Size: 6×9

Page Count: 32

Formats available: Case laminate hardcover

Layout Style: Illustrated Children’s Book

Book Description: This is a story about love, forgiveness and the value of family and community support. Little Toby Cuddleecat has a hungry tummy and can’t sleep. He accidentally eats Mummy’s special birthday cake nearly all up! Oh no! Now there is no surprise for Mummy. What will the seven Cuddleecat kittens do now?

Editors: Nadara “Nay” Merrill from Nay’s Notations

Book Designer: Melinda Martin (that’s me!)

Fonts: Interior text set in Bressay. Cover text set in Belinzie.

Printer: 1010printing.com

Designer's Notes

Often times, the picture books I gravitate toward are ones where the author is also the illustrator: Ian FalconerMaurice SendakPeter BrownJanell CannonFlavia Drago, and the Fan Brothers, just to name a few.

This is because the art and the text have no choice but to be in sync. They come from the same spirit, from the same secret place of what makes us who we are. And it calls to my spirit.

After working in this industry for so many years, I have come to learn that not everyone sees picture books the way I do. Most self-publishing authors are so caught up in their own words and the dopamine hit of publishing a book that they undervalue and overlook what it is a picture book is all about in the first place. This is why I don’t accept every author that wants to hire me. Designing picture books is not just a cash grab for me. The client and I must be a good fit.

I first connected with Cindy in July 2023. Although Cindy is no stranger to creating quality art, Cuddleecats was her first book and she reached a point where she realized she needed the help of an experienced picture book designer. And I’m so glad she chose me!

I could tell right away that Cindy was immensely talented and knowledgeable. She has her own courses on artistry and is also an ambassador for Derwent Art and St Cuthberts Mill Products. While I have a deep appreciation for the ease of management that digital art provides (layers for days!), I fell in love with art before computers became our go-to canvas. 

Cindy’s YouTube channel does a great job at showing off her vast skillset and talent. 

  • Black Pen Outline for Cuddleecats Character Illustration: Drawing your character is just the beginning. Adding a black pen outline can further enhance the 3D illusion by reinforcing the distribution of weight, highlights, and shadows. Creating variation in your outline makes the image more exciting and interesting. Cindy shows you where and how to add accents, interrupted line, tapered line and how to create soft fur strokes. She also explains how to consider line width for fabric and folds.
  • Vintage Style Book Illustration: This is a speed drawing of a tiny portion from a double-page spread in a vintage style with the Cuddleecat cute kittens. Cindy is using Derwent Inktense with watercolor techniques in the first layer. Once that’s dry, she moves on to Derwent Procolor on top.
Now that you have seen for yourself just how amazing Cindy is (and with the best accent ever to boot!), let’s get into the development of her picture book.

Assessment of Late-Stage Art

Since Cindy came to me with finished artwork, this project started with an assessment of what was needed to turn her art into the quality picture book she wanted it to be. While she had done a fabulous job with her art, she hired me because she realized that there was a whole other side to this picture book business than creating beautiful art. 

  • Make sure the text and the artwork were properly paired up.
  • Make sure that the necessary pagination parameters were met for her specific book binding requests.
  • Decide on a trim size.
  • Finalize the text so we could make strategic typesetting decisions.
  • Gameplan how her existing art could be framed and/or changed in order to allow for text and pagination.
Although Cindy did start with a picture book storyboard template, a storyboard template is no replacement for an experienced picture book designer.
 

 

I was so pleased to see that Cindy understood how to properly paginate her book. As trivial as it may seem, so many authors struggle with this. 

If you look closely, you can tell that Cindy did add in lines as placeholder for the text. But there’s a problem: Text placement should be an organic part of the art. Text should not ever be placed on top of anything that has a competing contrast. 

Under normal circumstances, your line of text should only be one color. That doesn’t mean it has to be white or black, but it’s usually 1) a light-colored text that is placed on a dark background or 2) a dark-colored text that is placed on a light background.

If your background is both light and dark, neither text option will work.

Additionally, we want the text to be unobstructed. Picture books are for our readers who are just learning to read. We don’t want to overcomplicate it for them. Also, we want to take into account that some of those little people may also have other challenges when it comes to reading. Legibility should always take precedence in picture books especially.

Take a look at some of Cindy’s beautiful artwork. As stand-alone art pieces, they are stunning! But it was immediately obvious to me that organic text placement was going to have to be created somehow.

 

Strategy

After Cindy decided on 6×9 as her trim size, she and I worked through each page via Zoom to see how we could best display her completed art versus coming up with a plan of action for art that required editing to make it work.

Cindy is an excellent writer, so we did not have to labor over perfecting the text. It was already perfect!

We landed on a mix of spot illustrations, single pages, and spreads with and without a framing convention.

Even though Cindy is a traditional artist, she and I were each able to tackle some of the edits in Photoshop. It’s very common for traditional artists to also learn a bit of Photoshop, and I’m thankful Cindy had already added this to her toolbox.

Aida Khatmullina was also a huge help with some required fine-detailing layer masking work to get the look I needed for some of the illustrations.

Here are some before-and-afters. Although Cindy did leave organic space for the text, we ultimately decided on these extractions for best text placement and the aesthetic as whole.

Cindy and I also considered an extracted option for the right page (eating cake), but we opted for the full image to best highlight her amazing work with the light on the floorboards.

In our minds, most of us “see” wood as a solid color, but it actually has a wide variety of contrast in order for the grain to be visible. It’s always best to not plan for text on top of wooden elements, especially if the art has lots of detail.

Extracting the backgrounds from these two photos allowed us to position one at the top and one at the bottom so the two separate arts weren’t in competition with each other.

Cover Design

Cindy submitted a cover design concept for review…

but after we sat with it for a bit, we kept her general concept but switched up the back cover text and artwork.

I found just the right font and the perfect vintage banner to highlight the series name, and I also painstakingly situated every star, flower, and heart around the front cover art. Cindy provided the lovely frame for the back and it just needed a small bit of Photoshopping to strike the perfect balance with the two arts. The devil’s in the details!

Instead of using custom binding tape or opting for a quarter-bound cover, we chose to go with just capturing the look that both of those options provide.

Bringing It All Together

Cindy has already received her print proofs and mass production is under way. Enjoy this video of Cindy unboxing the Cuddleecats in Mummy’s Biggest, Best Birthday Surprise Ever!

I hope you enjoyed this book design tour of The Cuddleecats and Mummy’s Biggest, Best Birthday Surprise Ever!

The mass-produced units will be ready for order fulfillment in Spring 2025.

I’m Melinda Martin, and I help authors create quality books for kids.

I meet each author where you are in the process. Request a fit call to learn how I can help you specifically.

Share this post:

Keep reading:

Self-Publishing How-Tos

Picture Book Storyboard Templates

Proper pagination is one of the great mysteries surrounding picture books. These picture book storyboard templates and accompanying explanations provide a firm foundation for your picture book layout.

Read More »

Find out how I work with
savvy authors like you.

Free Workflow Process: How to Organize Your Manuscript.