David Berkowitz, the principal and founder of Serial Marketer and the Serial Marketers community hired me to illustrate his book "Berky's Marketing English - A Quaint Compendium of Meaning for the Modern Marketer".
It was a challenging task, one that I loved deeply. You can access the results at berky.co to get your own copy. Berky's Marketing English is also available in hardcover.
This is the process of the project.
Enjoy.
The first thing to do was to find the visual identity for the book.
The client was looking for traditional illustrations to contrast with his writing, something that could be used for both his more serious/technical terms and the ironical ones. His idea was to bring the old victorian illustrations of encyclopedias to his project.
I made quick personal notes about the terms I wanted to illustrate - first on the index page, then separatedly on each item. I'm a bit traditional in everything I do, and I enjoy having a small sketchbook for my projects.
The deliverable of "Generalist". I scanned in high resolution, edited on Photoshop and corrected details I thought were important.
The ideas were communicated with the client, so we would know what would work (or not). He gave me a lot of creative freedom, so this part was particularly fun.
Plus, I knew I could count on his honesty.
Plus, I knew I could count on his honesty.
The red circle was added by the final stage to close the visual identity of the book.
This was my time to get out of my comfort zone, and one of my biggests challenges as an Illustrator - my first full book layout.
First we thought about the cover art.
The idea here was to use the colors of his brand to make the cover art - this would be further applied also on the book. However, I went for a darker red to fit the theme of the illustrations better.
The layout was inspired by encyclopedias and dictionaries. I wanted something that didn't look old, but a bit sophisticated.
In conclusion, this was one of my most important projects. I was not completely familiar with InDesign and I had to do a lot of researches, as I've only made layouts for children's picture books and personal projects. I'm forever thankful for David Berkowitz for his patience and his trust on my work.
Thank you for reading until the end!
The remake of Serial Marketers logo to fit the book.