Super Simple is a brand that uses original and classic songs along with super cute visuals to teach kids all around the world. Whether English is their first or second language, Super Simple has made it their mission to making teaching and learning fun and easy. The variety of art styles used by the brand presented a fun and unique challenge when it came to designing branding for different formats and figuring out how that branding would changes across different titles.
I really enjoyed working with Skyship Entertainment, as they were incredibly easy to work with especially when it came to providing us with the content we needed. Additionally, the team was just very kind and genuinely wanted to give us as much as we needed to produce the best books possible for their young readers – something I hope is clear to anyone who picks up our books 😊
storybooks
As I mentioned, above, Super Simple has a ton of shows with a variety of art styles. The style for Rhymington Square, Noodle and Pals, Carl’s Carwash, and Finny the Shark are all different from each other, so it was important to find a way to present the branding in a way that would work across each of our storybooks no matter which show we were making a book for.
The two books shown here are for two different shows, but the Super Simple tag in the top left corner tie the two together effectively while still feeling unique to their respective books. Additionally, because the Super Simple logo is so colorful, we wanted to make the tag just as colorful if possible by using complementary colors that would change from book to book.
Book Design: Salena Mahina & Lauren Mowat
Editorial: Katie Woehr
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Book Design: Salena Mahina & Lauren Mowat
Editorial: Katie Woehr
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Board Books
Similarly to the storybooks above, the process for working on the board books with Skyship Entertainment was similar and super easy. But we also wanted to find a way to differentiate between the storybooks and the board books. Because both are square-shaped, we wanted to consider how they would visually stand apart from each other when scrolling through covers on a website. That is why for this, we chose to do a horizontal banner, similar to the storybook, but this time the logo would be larger and the position of the title would be directly under it rather than off to the side.
Again, it was important to do something that could work across the different shows and art styles that would complement the art and not overshadow it. I think that was successful on both of these 😊
Book Design: Salena Mahina & Meaghan Meadows
Editorial: Katie Woehr
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Book Design: Salena Mahina & Meaghan Meadows
Editorial: Katie Woehr
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Super Simple: Super fun Activity & Coloring Book
This activity book was possibly the most challenging of the covers when it came to design, mainly because all those art syles I was talking about? Well this is the first time we had them all on and in one book! Skyship being so hands on made the project much easier and having access to a variety of assets for the different shows helped a lot as well.
I’d say the biggest challenge came from fitting as many characters on the cover without making it too busy and without losing any of the characters either against the background color or just in the different elements of the cover. Even deciding on what color we used for the background was challenge here, primarily because the Super Simple and all of the characters we wanted to present are so colorful. Achieving that visual balance was tricky but we got such a cute result that we are all pleased with!
Cover Design: Salena Mahina, Meaghan Meadows & Daniel Turner
Book Design: Two Red Shoes Design, Meaghan Meadows & Daniel Turner
Editorial: Katie Woehr
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
