Readers Digest Condensed Books

Requirements

Shark Attack has produced many illustrations for the Readers Digest Condensed Books over the years. In the Images tab is a selection of some of them.

Challenges

Every volume of Condensed Books contains abridged versions of 4 current bestsellers. This means that rather than having a traditional ‘cover’, each story is given an illustrated double page title spread inside the volume.

The requirements, of course, differed with each illustration, but they did have certain common factors; since these were interior title spreads rather than a wrap-around book cover there was a deep central gutter to take into account. And paper stock, being regular book paper, tended toward the absorbent, so it was necessary to watch out for heavy ink coverage in case it started to fill in.

Other than that, each project presented the challenge of presenting the sense of the story but without giving the plot away.

Solution

Each story was different, and consequently the illustrative solution for each one was different also. Generally the solution was to take visual elements from one or two scenes in the story and create an atmospheric montage. For one or two we decided to go a more graphical route; mostly, however, it was felt that the montage solution was more in keeping with what the publisher’s audience expected.

Client reaction

This client has kindly submitted a public testimonial. See what Conorde Clark has to say about Shark Attack on the testimonials page.

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