Take Heart
Trauma Art Therapy Coloring Book Concept
For a product design project, I envisioned a company that specifically helped those recovering from trauma through art. I centered my project on an imaginary company called, "Take Heart Counseling," which used their own specially structured coloring books to aid in their patients road to recovery (amongst other traditional art activities).
Original Concept
I sketched out the original illustration in pencil and then finished it in Adobe Photoshop. I was only required to design the cover, and not fill the book with art before I printed it into a physical mock up, which I did later for my final presentation packet in class.
Revised Concept
The revision of the original design was intended to reflect a hand-crafted identity for the company. A hand-drawn coloring book (made by either volunteers or patients) would make the tool more intimate and engaging to the patients who used it as they knew it was made by others for their benefit and intended healing. It would also give local and abroad artists from all walks of life a chance to help outside of donations by contributing their skills to create some pages for each book (while following visual and topic guidelines provided by the company).
The logo was also revised, but assembled in Illustrator with no hand drawn elements.
Revised Concept Design Process
I decided that only the top part of the illustration was needed for the cover, so I cropped it in Photoshop before moving it into Adobe Illustrator.
Front Cover
XL Canson Mixed Media Paper
Pentel 0.7 Pencil
Pink 18, Pink 13, Yellow Green 10, Green 1, Yellow 7, Brown 5, and Brown 8 Royal Langnickel Azure Markers
N55 Tombow Grayscale ABT Water-Based Brush Marker
Materials Used:
Back Cover
XL Canson Mixed Media Paper
Pentel 0.7 Pencil
Green 1, Tan 1, Yellow 8, and Brown 5 Royal Langnickel Azure Markers
N55 Tombow Grayscale ABT Water-Based Brush Marker
Materials Used:
The Assembly
The selected parts of the illustration were arranged on a 19.5x9.5 canvas in Adobe Illustrator and combined with The Artisan Marker Serif Regular and P22 Stanyan typefaces to enhance its hand-drawn aesthetic.
The front and back covers were swapped at the last minute to avoid the final result printing backwards (so the final file looked like the reverse of what’s shown here), and the flowers at the top of the back cover were removed in favor of creating more negative space.
The Production
Materials used:
18in C-THRU Stainless Steel Flexible/Non-Skid ruler
Elmers Glue
Standard printing paper
Acrylic paintbrush
Pentel 0.7 Pencil
Adobe Illustrator
To assemble a mockup of the book, I converted the finished cover file to a PDF and brought it to my local print store. Due to the unusual measurements I chose for the book (19.5x9.5), I included crop marks in my file and cut it out myself using the store’s equipment, as their machines couldn’t cut out the cover without the measurements being exact to their specific paper sizes.
Once that was completed. I used an X-Acto blade and metal ruler to measure out and cut several pages to fill out the book. I then glued the pages together with the paintbrush to form a spine, which I then glued into the spine of the book to connect the two and create a functional, intractable mockup.
View the video below to see the steps on how I accomplished this.