Not one but two PANZ Book Design Award shortlisted titles

The Wonky Donkey was written and performed by Christchurch author/songwriter Craig Smith and illustrated by Katz Cowley, then designed here at Book Design. It's been an amazing ride with 180,000 copies printed so far, including 90,000 for Australia and it's about to hit the US market.

Back here in NZ, the fun is really starting to rock and roll with The Wonky Donkey winning the Children's Choice Award at this year's NZ Post Children's Book Awards and now we've been nominated for a design award in the PANZ Book Design Awards.
http://www.booksellers.co.nz/book-news/trade-news/outstanding-shortlist-announced-panz-book-design-awards

News just out, sales in New Zealand have just gone Platinum!

It's worth mentioning how we went about producing this book. 
Katz Cowley is a first-time illustrator who needed a bit of confidence boosting. Our client Scholastic NZ asked if we'd go visit and have a look over the roughs to check that they would be practical for book production. (This was our first look at the illustrations and WOW they really blew us away!) With a couple of pointers on text placement and a suggestion of hand writing the 'Hee Haw!' we all started thinking about fonts and tones.
This is a book that required ambience. These gorgeous drawings couldn't just sit on a white page. Our whole studio started looking for a background texture with many shopping trips for handmade papers and loads of scanning and photoshop manipulation. We really wanted to make something of this book and do justice to these beautiful illustrations.
The editor Penny Scown of Scholastic NZ was the first to come up with the perfect hand written font and with cover input from Scholastic Australia, Anita really made sure all the teams requirements were met.

Cengage love giving us a challenge and  Year 9 Graphics was no exception. It's not a concept we'd completed before, with a workbook accompanying an A3 designed work pad and interactive Teachers' Guide CD. Educational books just don't seem to get the same hype as trade books, but the amount of great feedback we've had on the colour used in this project has been really nice and the interactive content on the Teachers' Guide is a concept we're seeing more and more of.
Peter brought this project to life with stock images and his own illustrations, while carefully following the author's guidelines.

The Awards are announced on the 22nd July with a cocktail party in Auckland. It's really great to have these opportunities to be there with the best.