This design for the children’s book cover design of Emil & The Detectives is playful and eyecatching. The use of mainly primary colours allows the book to stand out by itself, to catch the attention of not only a child’s eye but also the attention of adults. Creating an unique hand drawn type gives individuality personality. It adds a sense of sense of playfulness to the design, being childish and fun. Using a serif typeface went hand in hand with the hand rendered type also reflecting the age of the story. The use of mainly primary colours allows the book to stand out by itself, to catch the attention of not only a child’s eye but also the attention of adults. The red, yellow, blue and green colours reflect the childishness of the book but by using fingerprints to represent characters add a sense of maturity. The fingerprints act as the detective characters from the story, the use of fingerprints reflects the crime mystery. Creating the fingerprints to look like stick men made them more characterful. Each detective is standing on top of one another with Emil at the top (in blue to represent the blue jacket he wears in the story) reaching for the stolen money. The tall stack of characters are wobbly instead of standing in a straight line to make it seem more realistic. The spine is white stand out against the blue background; the whole aim of this design is to emphasise it’s character, a white spine adds to this along with an image of Emil in the form of a fingerprint.
The hand rendered type reflects perfectly a typeface associated with a woman. The flowing of the type creates the effect of a washing line, something also associated with a woman as being a typical house wife. The sans serif type as a body copy typeface works well with the strong hand rendered type used on the front of book. The use of only black and white colours makes a bold statement something that this book is aiming to do. By adding colour may have made this book cover design too ‘girly’ and childish, not something the book is about. Each image on the back cover of the book was chosen after asking peers what objects they would associate with women. Each item hangs off what looks like a washing line. The spine is in black with white type to make a statement; this represents this book as it an adult non fiction and that’s what it aims to do. The book cover design overall gives off a sense of femininity and sophistication. An exploration into a women’s life. he form of a fingerprint.