Red Paper Books

This is a buy-in from an Aus­tralian pub­lisher. The orig­i­nal was in mono with incon­sis­tent typog­ra­phy. But the text was good, so rights were bought and we were asked to repack­age the book with Firecrest’s art­work to pro­duce new lay­outs. An Ein­stein bof­fin char­ac­ter is used to raise issues and medi­ate the learning.

(The © water­mark is not art of the design! LOL)

(more…)

Aba­cus Evolve is a ver­sa­tile and cus­tomiz­able maths course pro­duced by Heine­mann. We worked on the inter­ac­tive teach­ing resources, ie. white­board pre­sen­ta­tions. They used Eas­iteach soft­ware from RM (Research Machines) which allowed easy onscreen manip­u­la­tion of objects, draw­ing, writ­ing in front of the whole class on inter­ac­tive white­boards by teacher or pupils. Eas­iteach was pre­ferred over Pow­er­Point because it is so easy for the teacher to adapt on-the-fly in response to the class.

(more…)

Cov­ers and sam­ple spreads from the 2nd stage/level of Oxford Read­ing Tree Snap­drag­ons. We were com­mis­sioned to pro­duce 60 titles, in 10 lev­els or stages, using a wide vari­ety of artists, type­faces, lay­outs and for­mats to moti­vate and stim­u­late read­ers. Though clearly lev­eled to pro­vide a pro­gres­sion through the series, each title had to be an inter­est­ing book to pick-up and read for its own sake.

Artists: Andy Peters, David Mostyn, Jess Mikhail, Judy Brown, Lizzie Fin­lay, Liz Pichon

(more…)

Lav­ish fold-out books describ­ing ani­mals and plants in their habi­tats. We have begun the sec­ond book which cov­ers the Ever­glades. A beau­ti­ful fold-out spread pic­tures the flora and fauna of the habi­tat, and sub­se­quent pages work through each exam­ple. These designs were done for the Bologna and Frank­furt book fairs. We are now work­ing on them for pub­li­ca­tion in the USA.

Day fold-out ©Firecrest Pub­li­ca­tions 2009

Snap­drag­ons is part of the ever expand­ing Oxford Read­ing Tree (ORT) from Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press. Usu­ally ORT book sto­ries cen­tre around the Biff and Chip char­ac­ters, with con­sis­tent art­work and type. Not so the Snap­drag­ons branch of the tree. We were com­mis­sioned to pro­duce 60 titles, in 10 lev­els or stages, using a wide vari­ety of artists, type­faces, lay­outs and for­mats to moti­vate and stim­u­late read­ers. Though clearly lev­eled to pro­vide a pro­gres­sion through the series, each title had to be an inter­est­ing book to pick-up and read for its own sake.

Artists: Jan McCaf­ferty, Sue Hen­dra, Jim Kavanagh, Joanne Par­tis, Ian Cun­liffe, Colin Mier

(more…)

Goal! is a read­ing scheme with a foot­ball theme for less able read­ers want­ing some­thing inter­est­ing to read. These are work­books that accom­pany the series.

A fun take on comic book super-heroes, and a good read too. Orig­i­nally 6, now 12, graphic nov­els done in a manga style. These read­ers are aimed at older chil­dren need­ing help with read­ing who would be put-off by books writ­ten for younger read­ers. Ran­som are par­tic­u­larly good at this sort of stim­u­lat­ing read, as is fur­ther demon­strated by their Goal! series.

The artist is Peter Richard­son. He works in Illus­tra­tor, and his art­work is easy for a designer to work with, as the files are highly editable and adapt­able for con­struct­ing pre­lim and cover pages, as well as being eas­ily uti­lized for par­tic­u­lar excerpts in worbooks.

(more…)

A series of books that Par­ragon pro­duces for M&S that young read­ers read with an adult. They are all very tra­di­tional fairy tales, designed to give chil­dren con­fi­dence to begin read­ing. These are hard­back books with coloured metal­lic foil block­ing in the titles and logo.

(more…)

Con­cept book design of pages for wide-format ref­er­ence books fea­tur­ing close-up illus­tra­tions of a vari­ety of ani­mals from dif­fer­ent habi­tats. This book con­cen­trates on Arc­tic and Antarc­tic animals.

Ice Fish and Alba­tross ©Firecrest Publications