Bite-Sized Books
Personal Project
Each Bite-Sized Book is a quick story for children. This ongoing personal project helps me hone my craft, build my portfolio, and share my work in a memorable way.
A Brief History
Bite-Sized Books was born out of my son’s high school creative writing assignment. After quite the struggle to get him to do an assignment involving the French Revolution, my oldest son wrote The Tastiest Bun. His story was so weird and uniquely him that I had to illustrate it. He has autism and a wonderfully weird sense of humor. I wanted to encourage him to share his stories with the world. After illustrating The Tastiest Bun, I placed it within the Instagram image carousel with the words in the images. This was a great way to share stories. I was on to something.
Picture Books for Instagram
My original idea was super lame and, honestly, a little too easy. “What if I made Little Instagram Books? It carries the nostalgia of Little Golden Books too!” In my excitement, I created the cover templates. I shared the idea with a friend who kindly pushed back saying I needed to create my own thing. No one needs a cease and desist. “But that’s hard. Damn you, John! … You’re right!”
So I thought about this problem for a while and came up with a Bite-Sized Book. These would be quick stories for children told in 8 pages. This would fit the image carousel well with a front cover, 8 pages of story, and back cover with “The End.” But first, I needed an identity to go with this new format.
Identity
For the logo, I wanted to have visual nods to a classic animal logo. So I created two distinct bears. I quickly realized I needed to simplify the logo. It needed to be easily read at a very small size.
The final logo adapts to various colors and backgrounds. The gold gives this a classic feel and provides a fairly neutral color that can work with the various color palettes on the front covers.
Because I was posting this on Instagram, I animated the logo for process videos.
With each story, I share my creative process before sharing the final pieces. The last post compiles the story into one post that’s easy to flip through.
Mailers
Previously, I mailed out postcards to a list of publishers—like everyone else looking for book projects. These mini booklets stand out from the typical postcard and check off all of the boxes an art director is looking for.