The first thing I did to generate ideas was to take the already given prompts from the book and jot down or draw the first thing that came to mind. The approach I chose was to take each phrase as literally as possible and see what I come up with. The phrases or words are: “bookworms”, “a closed/open book”, “the oldest trick in the book”, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”, “in someone’s good/bad books”, and”by the book”.

I was intrigued most by the concepts for “the oldest trick in the book”. The literal interpretation that I came up with for this phrase was that there are little creatures living in books who either are tricks come to life or are simply named “Trick”. My initial sketch was of a little old man (hence “oldest trick”) coming out of a book. Once the idea took root, I started drawing the little character in multiple positions as he interacts with a book.

Then I kept using the same phrase, but slightly deviated from the initial theme for the sake of brainstorming even though I liked my initial concept. I played around with the idea of a book for beginner stage magicians, one full of old (classic) magic tricks. I thought it would be interesting to create a book that also looks somewhat aged, or old-fashioned in its binding and design. It could be an interesting experience for the reader to have a tome-like book that is supposed to look like it was handed down from master to apprentice for many generations.

My next idea was to take it in a completely different direction. I pretended I was designing the cover for a biography. The biography would be about the oldest person named “Trick” to be found in the book (the phonebook). And perhaps it would also be about the tricks he had played throughout his life. Or tricks about life that his story could teach.

In the end, I chose to use the initial idea with the little book-gnome. Both because it felt like the most exciting from the three and because I would like to go into children’s book illustration. The first choice felt like the most appropriate.

Once I settled on a concept, I started jotting down thoughts about what the book would be about and what it could look like. I thought of a story taking place inside a library. There, a child discovers “Old Mr. Trick” who lives in the books and between the books. They strike a friendship and the protagonist learns lessons from the little gnome that could be considered “the oldest trick in the book”.

For example: The child has problems making friends. So the wizened gnome tells him to go to the person he wants to make friends with and ask them a question about their favorite game. Or perhaps he asks what to do after he got into a fight with someone, and Mr. Trick tells him to be the one to apologize first, whether or not he thinks he was in the right.

Again, it’s all about old tricks. And since it is a children’s book, it would be about solving simple problems for which it is best to learn the answers to from as young an age as possible.

To get a better idea for the story and the design of the book itself, I created some sketches for both the gnome and the child. (The sketches of children are studies of other illustrations found on Pinterest, because when I draw children they all look the same.)

Lastly, I penned out a couple of ideas for what I would like the design direction for the text to be.

In order to gain more ideas and to solidify what I would like my final product to be, I started researching. First on the internet where I gathered some ideas for the cover design, and then I went to a nearby bookstore where I could actually hold the books in my hands and think about what I would like my book to be like in terms of size and feel.

Pinterest Board

When I was looking, I gravitated towards books targeted to children at a beginner-reader age. I think the lessons Old Mr. Trick would have to teach would be most relevant for children of about that age. This means that the books I was looking at had a lot of very beautiful pictures with only a few lines of text for both pages of a spread. The images were mostly digital, and mostly as two-page spreads with the exception of older books like  The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, which are generally painted in gouache or watercolor and have smaller images with the occasional larger spread.

This last book, “Băiețelul care se putea mușca de nas”* by Alex Moldovan ( The boy who could bite his nose, translated) was the one I was inspired by in regards of shape and design in general. I liked the square-ish dimensions and the medium size, I could picture my little story very easily in a similar format. It felt right, so I decided to adapt that to “Old Mr. Trick”.

*Moldovan, A. and Georgescu I. (2019). Băiețelul care se putea mușca de nas. Editura Arthur

To better understand how printing and binding a book works, I simulated in a smaller format what large printers would do to create a book. I took a sheet of paper, folding it to create an A6 size and numbered the pages on the front and back of the paper to simulate imposition and folding. Once the folded up pages are cut into “signatures” they can be bound together to create a book.

I created an A5 pamphlet with 16 pages by folding and binding together four A4 sheets of printer paper. But before binding, I numbered the pages and analyzed how the numbers corresponded to each other when the papers were separated.

For my book mock-up, I wanted to make something that would be similar visually to what the end product could theoretically be, as opposed to making a mock-up with the precise number of pages. A precise number of pages (standard of 32 for children’s illustration) would be important if I also had to storyboard the book, but since I will not be creating an entire story, I chose to keep to creating the design of the cover and the general feel of the book in terms of weight and shape.

I started out by taking a large piece of paper and tracing a line in order to create the dimensions I wanted the book to have. Then I set two of those side by side in order to create the precise shape I would need to cut out the pages in.

Tracing shape on paper.

Cutting the pages to appropriate size using a straight-edged object.

Sowing the signatures together (after pairing the pages up in groups of four sheets for each signature)

Gluing the cardboard to a sheet of thick colored paper, then folding the edges around and gluing them down as well

I was happy with the mock-up, but to better visualize the children’s book, I needed some illustrations. Like with everything, I started out with sketches. Though I did not need to use the sketchbook because I already had plenty of concepts to refer to from there, so I went straight to my drawing paper.

I first drew out my ideas in pencil (using slightly different proportions for each concept), then I sketched out over the pencil using my preferred traditional medium, dip-pen and India ink. I was not too precious with these since firstly, they were only sketches for a mock up and secondly, I would be transferring them to a digital software after photographing them.

I tested out a different color palette for each piece, some cool some warm, and endeavored to not spend too much time on only one, because again, these are not finished pieces. I ended up wasting a little too much time on this first one (I unnecessarily painted each book in the margin.)

And while I tested colors, I also tested ideas for the title font. I did not create these myself, they are form a free font website, but I did embellish or modify most of them to suit my needs.

The ones I liked the most were the ones where the child and the gnome interacted, both because they are charming and because they better illustrate that the book is about their interaction, even if the title  Old Mr. Trick only describes the gnome.  And while the illustration with the window would be nice as an illustration for somewhere within the book, the characters are easier to see in the one where they both sit on the library floor. Also the atmosphere in that illustration is nice and cozy, one almost wishes we could sit with them!

After so choosing, I made a few small adjustments to make the sketch a little more clean and presentable. Then I took a different illustration for the back cover of the book. The illustration where Mr. Trick is facing the other way was perfect for a back cover, so I changed its colors a little bit to match the front cover. And lastly, I cut out the second image in order to make one of the inner title pages. I wanted it to be simpler than the rest in order to show off the title, so I used only a subtly textured background.

The font I ended up with was the one I edited the most. I changed the size of the “Mr.” in order to give the text some variety, and I added the same texture that exists in the background. The text is also shaded to look like it is affected by the lighting in the illustration, with the addition of a rim light on the bottom that doesn’t really make sense (physics wise, since there is no such rim lighting on the other elements of the illustration), but it makes the text stand out better.

After finishing and going out to print everything out, I simply cut the white margins off the images and glued them down to both the covers and the inner pages.

That is how I made my first children’s book mock up!

This exercise has been overall, very successful in my opinion. I loved stretching my creative boundaries to see what I could make. The biggest thing I regret, though, is not creating a book with the corresponding number of pages, even though my thinking in the beginning made a sort of sense. I had wanted to make the book thick enough for it to feel like the final product, and since the only pages I had that were large enough to make it out of were thin, I had to put in more pages. But looking back, I think the mock up would have benefitted from having the 32 page count. Perhaps I could have gotten a better idea of what 32 pages looks like when in this format, and perhaps I could have lent a little time to go into what the design of the interior would look like. Though I am not sure how to do that without creating the story first. Despite a bit of failure, I think I still managed to make a decent mock up.

And I definitely learned a lot from it! It has been a truly enjoyable process that has helped me grow as a illustrator and future book designer.