Of course the first thing I did after I analysed the 'Emil and the Detectives' brief was look up the existing book covers, to allow myself an idea of what I will be re-inventing. I immediately saw yellow in various shades, as the reoccurring colour across the whole of the range of covers, minus one. To me, yellow is a symbol of warmth and friendliness, and it is also colour that has no gender specification/stereotype, so is obviously aimed to attract both boys and girls. I think this will be one area that I will not be sticking to because it has visually been done at least four times here.
I also noticed that most of the covers look the same in terms of illustration. They all have a hand drawn little boy on the cover and maybe this is something that Penguin are willing to change, in their words 'whole new cover'. I also noticed that placement is also very similar on each cover. The title is mostly on the top of the page and the illustrations are in the centre. Perhaps I can reinvent this and go with something completely different. Maybe think of rhythm on a page instead of plain and structured.
Knowing that I wanted to involve some sort of illustration of a detective on my cover. I went into researching the different appearances from different eras. I know recently in popular TV shows, such as 'True Detective' and 'Dexter', detectives do not 'look' like detectives, in fact they actually look like police officers under cover. However the more I looked into eras, the more I started to see that I really liked the look of the formal suit, jacket and bowler hat that you see in black and white films. I especially think that younger children will be able to distinguish a detective with this attire, than one with that of a normal police officer.
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