A not insignificant amount of illustrated non-fiction publishing involves repackaging and the repositioning of a growing backlist of titles. Its good business to mine your past books and give them a new lease of life. Sales can be boosted by updating editorial content where needed and applying a new design can transform a tired looking publication. All of this is achieved with less cost and time than would be required if one was commissioning a project from scratch.
So you have refreshed your editorial to include the latest thinking from the experts and now have a new funky and engaging design. It's just like going to the sales team with a new book! Well not quite. Illustration styles fall in and out of fashion with surprising frequency, and if your project has them, you can find them at odds with the rest of the design.
Presenting a new look
Illustration refresh – is that a thing? At Oakley Creative, we think so. A project arrived with a brief to refresh the illustrations for a massage book. The coloured pencil diagrams produced some time ago would have been in keeping with the subject matter and original design when done but now looked outdated and jarred with the new typography and page layouts.
Sample illustrations were produced and tweaked with feedback from the publisher to establish the look. With the new style agreed they were carefully crafted to match the information conveyed in the originals (with the occasional modification at the request of the author and editor). The book was now looking on point and ready for its new release into the market.
Old (top) and new refreshed illustration below. Clean simple lines and flat colours were employed to give a contemporary feel (no tickling of the foot was allowed) which was in style with the updated design of Tui Na: Massage to Awaken body and mind.