Refresher

To those of you coming to my blog for the first time, welcome, to those returning, thanks for coming by again.

This post is directed to those of you here for the first time. Please allow me to fill you in on a few details about what my thesis project is about.

In an effort to explore American culture, I found that Americans love to eat. However what we are eating combined with a very sedentary lifestyle has had a negative effect on our health. Unhealthy weight gain has resulted in a decline in our quality of life. This will have an even greater impact on the newest generation of Americans. Doctors are predicting that if our current lifestyle trends continue, children born today will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. My thesis was created as an attempt to re-direct this course.

Eat & Act: Grow Healthy with your Child is an organization dedicated to educating and empowering parents of young children to help parents instill the value of healthy living early in life. To do this, I wanted to create a forum for parents to talk to their children about healthy lifestyle habits. This is how SIMON, the lima bean was born.

Over the course of the last year and a half i have created a brand, written, illustrated, and designed a series of SIMON childrens books, as well as a hand book for parents, in the hopes of creating a partnership between parent and child. Each one's health depends on the other. SIMON's stories create excitement around healthy lifestyle habits, and it is a parent's responsibility to respond to this excitement and lead by example.

By addressing this issue early in life, health is approached in a preventative manor. I strongly feel that a battle prevented is a battle won.

Thanks again for stopping by. Lots of work has been done since the last few posts have gone up, soon I will be printing and binding, and before I know it May 15th will be here and it will all be over with. Well, the MFA thesis part. I plan to shop the SIMON books around in the hopes of getting them published. So keep an eye out at your local bookstore, you may just find SIMON sitting on a shelf. :)

Final Covers, Odds & Ends

These are the final final final covers. No more changes! Or else I will pull my hair out. It feels good to finally complete something in this whole thing.

To get a closer look at the covers check out this PDF.

I'm preparing the Simon books for printing. That means buying stock photos, fixing images that run across the gutter, converting images to CMYK (per printer's request), crossing my t's and dotting my i's. When that is done, I'll send them out for one final crit, and then it's off to the printers. Meanwhile I'm working on finalizing who will have the honor of binding these things. I'm hoping to be holding these books in my hands by the middle to end of April.

You are probably wondering where the parent handbook is in all of this. Let's just say, it's patiently waiting for me to finish with the childrens books. Simon is the gem of my thesis, I need him to shine brightest.

Despite pulling all nighters already at this point in my final semester in school (on a Saturday no less), I'm thrilled with the results. It's good to do something I feel incredibly proud of. :)

Simon Books

Well I made the big push this last week to finish my Simon Bean books and they look great! They are about 90% complete because there are some stock photos I used that I need to buy (so you may see some pixilation and the word "istockphoto" on some of the images), grammatical & spelling corrections, and a few design corrections I need to make with the typography and element to grid adjustments.

I've posted PDFs of each book below. They read basically how they would if you were holding them in your hand, with it starting with the cover, to the end pages to the opening spread, and so forth. I'm hoping to have these printed on a cream colored paper to add warmth to the illustrations. I'll know for sure once I get to the printers and talk to them about it and see if they can accommodate that request. I hope you enjoy reading them, and maybe you'll learn something you didn't know along the way.

Each book's story corresponds with a healthy priority parents should adopt into their family's lifestyle.

Healthy Priority #1: Regulate calories in liquid form
SIMON Wants to Rock Out

Healthy Priority #2: Reduce processed foods in your diet
SIMON Has Rumbles in His Tummy

Healthy Priority #3: Reduce your portion sizes
SIMON Tests His Strength

Healthy Priority #4: Adopt more activity into your daily life
SIMON Goes on an Adventure

The purpose of these books is to get parents talking to their children about these healthy priorities early in their life to bring awareness and a solution to the negative effects of the food environment and sedentary lifestyles that surrounds us.

Simon Covers

Here they are! The completed Simon book covers. (baring any feedback from directors and advisors). I'm quiet pleased with 3 out of 4 of them. The Strength one is ironically the weakest. I think it's because the actual story is probably the weakest. But honestly, 3 out of 4 is a pretty good batting average when you've never written, designed, or illustrated a childrens book in your life. We'll see if in the next 3 weeks i get the urge to totally re-write that story.

If I don't re-write the story, I may re-visit the Strength cover again later. It just needs to be more dynamic, maybe making rope part attached to the ball at more of an angle would help. What's even more ironic, that cover also has the most clever play on imagery as you follow the rope to the back. I do need to re-work it, but it's late and I need to move on to something else.

I've also uploaded a PDF of the covers all opened out. The books are hardbound with dust jackets. So the covers are actually dust jackets that have a back, spine, and flaps. You'll find that the white elements going off to the spine side actually interact with things on the back of the covers. So to get the full effect of the covers click below.

Simon covers all opened up.