This project was a commission to do the illustrations for a study skills book, “Think Savvy: Revise Smart”, published in 2018 by Christine West. This project required me to develop a sketchnote style of illustration which would appeal to a high school audience. I was then given a range of ideas from the author in the form of rough sketches, or written descriptions indicating the desired pictures and what they were trying to convey. I developed over 30 final sketches as well as multiple iterations over the course of this project, editing the physical drawings in Photoshop when required.
Though I already knew the author wanted a sketch note style for the illustrations in Think Savvy: Revise Smart, I still firstly had to develop a illustration style. This consisted of various elements like the arrows, stick figures, and even the writing. To do so, I generated a large number of designs for these elements and then sent these to the author for feedback, who selected the designs they liked the best and noted any changes they wanted.
For the illustrations for which I was given a short description of what concepts needed to be conveyed, I firstly spent some time breaking down the desired concept, and considering the different ways of showing it through a simply sketch that would be quickly and easily recogniseable. I then did a few different sketches of the different ideas and multiple iterations to arrive at a few preliminary designs. I then sent these sketches to the author for feedback, and iterated them further. Once I had received approval for the final designs, I then drew over these final design sketches with a fine-line pen so that they could be scanned at high quality to be put into the book.
For the illustrations for which I received a rough sketch from the author of the desired concept, I followed a similar process, but generally without multiple concepts and instead some slightly different iterations of the same design.
